 Live from San Diego, California, it's theCUBE. Covering Cisco Live US 2019. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back to theCUBE. We are live at Cisco Live in San Diego, sunny San Diego. Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante and Dave and I are super geeking out here. Susie Wee is with us, she's back with us. SVP and CTO of DevNet. Susie, welcome back. Thank you, it's great to be back. So this event is massive. Cisco's been doing customer and partner events for 30 years now. What started as networkers, we now know is Cisco Live. Something else you might not know that's also 30 years old, Susie, the movie The Field of Dreams. Wow, that's a good one. DevNet kind of feels like The Field of Dreams. It does kind of feel like that, that's a good one. Five years, yes. Only five years. This has been so influential in Cisco's transition and transformation. You've got nearly 600,000 members in this community. The DevNet zone, it's jam-packed yesterday, today, I expect tomorrow as well. Yes. And you guys made some really exciting announcements. Yes, we did. Tell us about that. So it's fantastic. So basically what happens is the network has gotten very powerful, it has gotten very capable. You know, you can do intelligence, machine learning, you can do intent-based networking. So instead of the network just being a pipe, you can actually now use it to connect users, devices, applications, use policy to make sure they're all connected securely. There's all sorts of new things that you can do. But what happens is while there's all that new capability, it's in order to take advantage of it, it takes more than just providing new products and new technology. So our announcements are basically in two areas and we call it, it's like unleashing the capabilities of the new network and by doing it in two ways. So one is by bringing software practices to networking. So now that it really is a software-based programmable network with all of these capabilities, we want to make sure that practice of software comes into networking. And then the other is in the area of bringing software skills to networking because you need the right skills to be able to also take advantage of that. So if I just jump right into it, so the first one in terms of bringing software practices to networking, we've announced something that we call DevNet Automation Exchange. And so what happens is, of course our whole community builds networks and as businesses have grown, their networks have grown, right? And they've grown and grown, businesses grown, grown and grown, right? And then it's become hard, it's become unmanageable. So while you say there's all these great new technologies, but these things have grown in their way, so our customer's biggest problem is actually network automation. Like how do I take my network? How do I bring automation to it? There's all the promise of it. And DevNet Automation Exchange is built to basically help our community work towards network automation. So it's a community-based developer center. What we say is that we're helping people walk, run and fly with network automation. By walking we're saying, okay, there's all these cool things you could do, but let's take it in three steps. Like first of all is let's walk. So first, just do a read-only thing. Like get visibility, get insights from your network. And you can be really smart about it because you can use a lot of intelligence, predictive modeling, you can figure out what's going on. So that alone is super valuable. Get the data. Get the data, learn. And then next is then, okay, I'm ready to take action. Like so now I've learned I'm ready to take action, apply a network policy, apply a security policy, put controls into your network. That's, you know, so walk, run. And then when you're ready to fly is when you're saying, okay, I'm going to get into the full DevOps loop with my network, I'm going to be gathering the insights, I'm going to be pushing in control, I'm now optimizing, managing my network as I go. So that's the whole fly set. So the fact we want to go to them for the walk, run, fly. And if I understand from reading your blog, great blog by the way. Thank you. A lot of executives write blogs and it's kind of short. Yours is really substantive. I'm like, wow. It's pretty substantive. And that's not all. But if I understood it correctly, you're going to prime, Cisco is going to prime the pump as well. Yes. With a lot of ideas and code and then. Yes. And then engineers can share theirs if they so choose. Exactly. So the key part of automation exchange beyond helping people to these areas, the question is how are we going to help them, right? So what happens is what we've been doing with DevNet is we've been helping people learn to code, you know, in terms of networkers. We've been helping bring software developers into the community. We've been helping them learn to use APIs. All the good stuff a developer, a good developer program should do. But what our networkers have said is I need help solving use cases. I need help solving the problems that I'm trying to solve like how to get telemetry and monitoring, how to get telemetry and insights from my network. How do I offer a self-serve network service out to my, you know, customers, line of business developers? You know, how do I automate at scale? And so what happens is there's a, you know, there's an opportunity or a gap between the products and APIs themselves and then solving these use cases. So we're now opening up a code repository, DevNet Automation Exchange, where the community can develop software that actually solves those use cases. Cisco's going to curate it. It's just going to be code on GitHub. We'll make sure that it has the right, you know, licenses that, you know, we do some tests that it's working well with the APIs. And then we're hoping it's going to become, we're hoping, you know, kind of the industry's leading network automation code repository to solve these problems. Well, it's just key because, I mean, a big challenge that customers tell us that they have with automation is they've got all these bespoke tools, none of them work together. So do you think something like this exchange can help solve that problem? It can, I believe it can. So the reason being is that, you know, there are tools that people use and everybody's environment's a little different. So some might want to integrate in and use Ansible, Terraform, you know, tools like that. And so then you need code that'll help integrate into that. Other people are using ServiceNow for tickets. So as something happens, integrate into that. People are using different types of devices, hopefully mostly Cisco, but they may be using others as well. We can extend code that goes into that. So it really helps to go in different areas. And what's kind of cool is that are there's an amount of code that where people have the same problems, you know, and you know, you start doing something, everyone has to make the first few kind of same things in software. Let's get that into exchange. And so let's share that. There's places where partners are going to want to differentiate. Keep that to yourselves. Like use that as your differentiated offer. And then there's areas where people want to solve in communities of interest. So we have someone who does networking and he wants to do automation. He does it for power management in the utilities industry. So he wants a community that'll help write code that'll help for that area, you know? So people have different interests and you know, we're hoping to help facilitate that because Cisco actually has a great community. We have a great community that we've been building over the last 30 years. They're the network experts. They're solving the real problems around the world. They work for partners, they work for customers. And we're hoping that this will be a tool to get them to band together and contribute in a software kind of way. So as the community begins to understand network automation and I liked your pathway of walk, run, fly. What are some of the projected business outcomes that any industry, whether it's utilities or financial services, will be able to glean from network automation? I can imagine how expensive from an OPEX perspective it is, all this manual network management. So what are some of the things that you project in the future that businesses who adopt this eventually are going to be able to reap? Absolutely, I mean, just very simple, well, so many things. So in the case of, let's say, manufacturing because you're talking about different industries. So there's a whole opportunity of connected manufacturing, right? So how do I get all of those processes connected, digitized and right now, right? Things are being pretty much run in their way, but if you can really connect them and digitize them, then you can start to glean business insights from them, right? Should I speed up? How's my supply chain doing? Where are my parts? Where's my inventory? Everything, you get all of that connected. That is like huge business implications on what you can do. Yeah, because you can start getting the flywheel effect around all that data. Exactly. So I've always been fascinated. You see the DevNet zone and there's these engineers, CCIEs saying, okay, I want to learn more. I want to learn how to code. The numbers keep growing and growing and growing. And so you've got new certifications now that you're adding. So that was the second part, yes. This is huge. You need to talk about that because it's big. So the second part of our thing is how we're bringing software skills to networking. So to get the most of all this opportunity, you do need software skills. And of course, that's what DevNet was originally founded on, is really helping people to build those skills. But we've kind of graduated to the next level because we've teamed up with the Learning at Cisco team which creates Cisco certification program. Cisco has an amazing certification program. So the CCIE is the gold standard and certifications and networkers around the world have that CCIE status. Partners have built up. They pay people for that. Any customer who's deploying networks, they will hire the CCIEs. So that was founded in 1993, the first CCIE. And that program in the next 26 years has grown to what it is. And what we've done is we've teamed up with them to now add a DevNet certification. So we're bringing in software skills along with the networking skills so that we have the Cisco certifications, the Cisco DevNet certifications sitting side by side. And we believe that right now the people who you've seen in the DevNet zone are the ones who know it's important. They come in, they're doing it. But they said, I want credit for what I'm doing. Like I get credit, I get a raise, I get bonuses. My job level depends on my networking certifications. I'm doing this on my nights and weekends but I know it's important. And now by bringing this into the program my company can recognize this. I'm recognized as a professional for my skills. It helps in all sorts of ways. Go ahead please. This just sounds way more to me than the next step in DevNet. It sounds like it's a revolution. It's a revolution. First addition in 26 years, that's big. Yeah, now I mean there've been changes in the program but it's the biggest change in those 26 years, absolutely. And we'll see what happens but I think it is a step change in a revolution for the industry because we're recognizing that networking skills are important and software skills are important and critical. And if you want to build a team that can compete, that can really help your company succeed you're going to want both of these skills together in your organization. And I believe that that's going to help accelerate the industry because then they can use all of these tools, right? So right now an IT department can either hold a company down or accelerate a company to success, right? Because the question is, how quickly can you help someone adopt cloud? How can they do multi-cloud? How can they innovate at software speeds? And now we're hopefully catalyzing the network industry to be able to work at that speed. Yeah, it was a joke. You want to be the department of no or the department of go and let's go. There you go. So is being a CCIE a prerequisite to the DevNet certification? It is not. Okay, so it's not linear. So you're getting, CCIE's obviously lining up to get certified, you see a lot of them here. But you could get kids out of college saying, okay, I want in. Absolutely. And so the way that it works is that, so actually you could, so what we have with the Cisco certifications for both the DevNet as well as the original Cisco certification path is that there's an associate level. Which means you have about a years working experience. You know enough, so CCNA, Cisco certified network associate. They know enough about networking so that they can learn the fundamentals of networking and then be effective as part of a team that runs networks. So that's what that certification does for you. We also now have a DevNet associate which is ensuring that you have the software skills that you can also enter a team that's writing software applications or doing automated workflows for a network. And we have to know that all developers are not created equally. So just because you wrote a mobile app doesn't mean that you can write software for a running operational network. So the DevNet associate is more, like you need to be able to securely use APIs, right? So there's a lot of things that are within that. And then we have the professional and the expert levels. And we have it on both sides. Now originally, we were thinking that there's the network engineer path, we're going to sprinkle a little software in there and we'll have the DevNet path for a software developer and it would be its own path. But we got feedback as we started presenting to our partners and to our customers and then they're like, no, this cannot be separate people. It's like it needs to come together. And so then we changed our, how we thought about it. And we said that there's a set of engineering certifications and there's a set of software certifications. Anybody can get what they want and you can start to combine them in very interesting ways. So I can put together my own career mosaic. Absolutely. So if you said, you know what? I am going to be that kick ass networker. And if we have the unicorn of like, and I'm going to, you know, over time, we're going to offer DevNet expert in the future. But if you said, I'm going to be a CCIE expert in the future, be a DevNet expert, that's awesome. But we're not forcing folks to do it because maybe you're going to be a CCIE, get a DevNet associate so that you can speak the language of software and know what it does. But then you'll sit alongside a developer and you guys will be able to speak the same language together. And we also make sure that our developers learn a bit about networking. So if you look at that associate, it's kind of 80-20 networking software, the other one's 80-20 software and networking so that they can actually work and talk to each other. So looking at these big waves that we're riding right now and compute in network with 5G, Wi-Fi 6, Edge, APIs anywhere, how is DevNet and the certification that you've just unleashed onto the world? How is it going to enable not just the community members to help accelerate companies to take advantage of some of these big waves, but how is it going to help drive Cisco's evolution? And so, and you bring up a great distinction, which is as we talk about a new set of applications and we talked about this at Create, at DevNet Create when you were there, is that app developers, if they understand the capabilities of the network, they can actually write an entirely new set of applications. Because 5G, Wi-Fi 6 are better. If you understand edge computing and the opportunity there, a networker will install a network that can host apps that makes edge computing real. So there's another reason for the app developer community to come together with the networkers. So when we talk about now, how does this help Cisco? Is, well, first of all, it takes all of the networkers that are out there and it ensures that they're getting to that next level so that you're really fully using those capabilities of the network, which can then accelerate business. So it really is, the new capabilities are entirely different way to look at networking that really do tie and drive business. And then the other is the other part we were talking about is those app developers that come in and write great applications can come in and now really be connected and actually use that whole network infrastructure and all its capabilities. So that really ties us to more kind of, instead of a networker going in, instead of going in and selling network kit and then figuring out the line of business thing separately, you can bring those applications into our ecosystem and into our offerings. So it's an integrated offering. Like here's a connected manufacturing offering that includes what you need to connect as well as third-party applications that are great for the manufacturing industry and now you're looking at selling that whole solution. And applications that we haven't even thought of, I remember in Barcelona, walking into the IoT zone and seeing some programmable device from a police car and a camera and some of these guys could just, they're going to create things that we DevNet create haven't even conceived. So you are creating sort of this new role. To me it's like the DBA, the CCIE it's now this new DevNet creator in a role that's going to have a lot of influence in the organization because they're driving value, right? They're going to bring people with them, people are going to say, oh, I want that. So now you've, I think you're throwing a stand in Barcelona the number of people that you've trained, I don't know, it's like many tens of thousands. I mean, where are we at today? Hundreds of thousands, so last year we were at, last year we had half a million, 500,000 last year, we're at 600,000 this year, we've grown 100,000 organic new members over the last year. So people are- So you're over half a million now? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's unbelievable. Yep, definitely, so no, it's great and just people are interested, right? So people are interested, people are learning, and that's what makes it interesting to me is people are finding value in it and they're coming. So I think that kind of DevNet in the last five years has been kind of like an experiment, right? So it's just like, is the industry ready? Like, do networkers really want to learn about software? What are the, we've been kind of priming it and by now getting to this next level, just the certifications, what we have learned from all of that is that it's real and that with the new capabilities in the network, we can really take our community and bring new people into our community to make that opportunity real and to drive business from the network. Everybody wants the code. They do, they do. I want a code. And some people are scared, actually. Some people are very scared. You mean intimidated, right? Intimidated, yeah, so there's this other people who've come in early, right? And they're the ones who you've seen in the DevNet zone, but everybody, of course, they start out scared. But then, right after they get over that fear, they realize this really is a new future. And so, then they start jumping in. And so, it's both fear and then opportunity. But that's what it's all about, yeah. Okay, I can do this for my business. Absolutely. I would love to know in the near future how many different products and services and maybe even companies have been created from the DevNet community bringing all these different Spisbert folks together. Can you imagine the impact? It is. I mean, one really small thing, because you've been with us at our little DevNet Create conference, is we have something there that's called Camp Create, which is where they spend a week hacking, right? So, and it's kind of sometimes our most serious attendees because they're choosing to code for the week as well as to attend. We didn't really add it all up yet, but what we found is there's about 25 to 30 people who attend that. A bunch of them got promoted in that year. Wow. So, in different ways, not in ways that are necessarily connected, but in their own ways, like in their company, this person got promoted to this one area. This other person got promoted, one person was a contractor, they got converted to a full-time employee. So, we have to go and do the math on it, but what's amazing is that, it just, you know, that brings, that fills our hearts. Yeah, awesome. Yeah. And it's organic too. Well, Susie, we thank you so much for joining David and me on theCUBE. You're going to be back with me tomorrow and some guests, so I'm looking forward to that. Excellent. Yes, absolutely. Going to be more great stuff. You guys are going to do a little co-hosting, I heard. We are! I didn't know that. I didn't know that. No, but I'll turn. I'll be the host as well. I'll try it. I'll try something new. Excellent. We're going to have fun. I'm looking forward to it. Thank you so much. Thank you for being with us in our whole vision of DevNet from the beginning. So thank you. Oh, it's been awesome. All right, we want to thank you for watching theCUBE. For Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. We will catch you right back with our last guest from Cisco Live in San Diego.