Network Automation

[Music]

How's my hair?

-Good, how's my hair? Perfect?
-Okay, we're ready.

Welcome, everyone, to today's Cisco chat

live. I'm Silviia Spiva, Cisco's Developer

Community Manager, and you know we always

bring you all the latest news from devnet.

We want to make sure that you know

the latest, and the latest is devnet

automation exchange. We have a great crew

with us. We're going to go first to hear

- from Patrick.
- I'm Patrick Rockholz,

I've been a Cisco for about four years

as a systems engineer in the Atlanta

select commercial space.
And before that, on

the customer side as a sales engineer

and network engineer
in the service provider arena.

Hey everybody, I'm Bill Hentschell,

I'm the Director of Enterprise

Networks for our Americas partner

organization, and as a nineteen-year

Cisco veteran and coder myself, I'm

excited to discuss what's going on with

partners and devnet.

And I'm John McDonough,

I'm a devnet developer advocate. I've

been with Cisco for quite a number of

years, and I've been programming all

those years, and I'm excited about this

new network automation
exchange that we have.

So of course, you get the tough question.

Sure.

What is DevNet Automation Exchange?

So, DevNet Automation Exchange is a place

where you can get some use cases and

code that could help you in your

automation...in your automation journey.

And that's great, but it's also a place

where you can submit, or give what you've

done, and I know that as a developer

every time I do something great, or

something good, I like to share it. And

not from, you know, pat on the

back perspective, but I think if it helped

me, it can help somebody else. So

Automation Exchange is a place where you

can get some use cases, and the code, and

how it was deployed, and things like that,

but it's also a place where you can

submit what you've done and tell us how

you did it. You know, give yourself a

little bit of a place to shine, and tell

us all about

your automation, and what you're doing in

your environment. And share with others.

You've been with DevNet for
two, three years now?

Coming up on three years, yeah.

But of course, you were presenting in the

DevNet Zone before that?

Oh my gosh, I

Iwas in another group, and I saw the great

stuff going on in DevNet, I thought if I

start presenting in the DevNet zone

Maybe they'll be like, hey, I like that guy

and they'll bring him in, or

bring me in, and so I started way back

presenting in the DevNet zone, but now I'm

actually a DevNet developer advocate for

datacenter, and you know, network

automation, data center automation, these

are things that I spend a lot of time

looking at and working on. And that's why

I'm so excited about this automation

exchange, because it gives me a place to

share what I'm doing.

So, hold on to that feeling of

remembering what it was like to want to

be part of DevNet, because we wanted to

make sure that everyone watching feels

welcome, and that they understand how

they can contribute

Sure.

Let's go to someone representing
one of our favorite

organizations. Patrick, tell us about...

...today, you're representing the Systems

Engineering Organization, who can

contribute to automation exchange?

So, the really, really short
answer is anyone,

but as far...in terms of our SE leadership

and how they've kind of
approached this,

especially with Chris Lunsford, and he

has really been an advocate for this

and really helped our engineering team

kind of move the needle, in terms of the

the coding and programming fundamentals

that we as SEs, as well as the community

as a whole need and desire. Chris and I

actually just finished a DevNet

workshop for local networking...some local

network academy students. Went through

the fundamentals around Python and APIs,

and DevNet has done a lot of those kinds

of events, not only local to areas

like Atlanta, but worldwide. Just in

terms of looking at some of the

different architectures with DevNet

Express events, with the workshops

there's been hackathons, and other ways

just to get the training and hands-on so

that they can really see what we're

doing in terms of making open, agile

approach to automation. And one of the

questions that we as SEs often ask even

our customers is what problem are we

trying to solve? And normally, I break

that down into kind of three pressures

that a lot of IT and networking teams

have. One is that external IT pressure,

right, where Cisco and other vendors

continue to introduce new features and

functionality that a lot of these teams

just currently don't have the bandwidth

to take advantage of, because they're

putting out fires all the time trying to

manage these networks that are becoming

more and more complex. Another one is in

terms of sort of this internal IT

pressure, where just internally, there's

more and more mobile devices,
more and more

IT devices that are being added to

the network. Again, adding that complexity

as well as security concerns. And the

third is a business pressure, where the

lines of business are really seeing how

important the network is. It's helping,

you know, with the customer experience,

like, one example, even locally to Atlanta,

is a furniture company that uses

location analytics to determine how long

a customer's been in a store, what

they're looking at, if they need help or not.

Or if it's in terms of saving money, like

another company that uses a freezer

refrigeration warehouse system where

they need to know...these temperatures are

critical to the business, and instead of

using humans that obviously can be

more error prone, they need to get that

data reliably through automation, as well

as to act on in any case
there's issues. So

that's kind of...the idea is
how can we help

with these pressures? And I see, just from,

you know, outside looking in to DevNet,

really, DevNet started with that code

exchange, right, the ability to kind of

curate code from github, and now I've

used Google, kind of bringing that code

into a place where they can look at it

and start to see some of those examples.

But as to your point, this Network

Automation Exchange is kind of the

next step into those real-world use

cases, where the community can kind of

see how they could drive the innovation,

not only from those examples, but using

those examples to even bring them back

and re-present them to the community,

to the automation exchange to

to continue the efforts there.

Those are some great examples,
and if I go to

Automation Exchange, will I see those use

cases there, or do we want to really take

the opportunity to remind people to

enter those use cases,
and shine, and share?

Yeah, I think that's a

great point, too. The use cases that are

there, it's kind of, I would say, a

starting point. And maybe the use case

doesn't...maybe it's not 100% of what

you're looking for, maybe it's 80%, you

can take that example,

add to it, and then sort of re-submit that

to...as a use case, also,
so that it helps other

people as well.

Now, we know that Cisco

loves our partners. We love our partners,

that's a hashtag, I didn't start it. My

friend, Mo Abdel, started it, but, you know

he's fantastic, so shout out to

Mo Abdel. And we're going to go to

someone else who is fantastic and loves

our partners, our friend, Bill. And we're

going to ask Bill why he's so involved

with DevNet, and why he sees DevNet as

being so important for Cisco partners.

It's a great question, Silvia.
You know, one

of the things in my time covering our

partner community and dealing with

partners globally in my former role is

that they're always looking for a way to

differentiate themselves. You know,

anybody can sell you a switch, or router,

or whatever from from us, or any

manufacturer, quite frankly. But what is

the thing that makes that partner unique?

How do they stand out in a crowd, and

as I did at Cisco Live U.S., one of the

conversations that came up time and time

again is how do I stand out? How do I

leverage the great stuff we do, and the

intellectual property? You know, it's not

just install some net ops hardware

faster or better, but really, how do I

start doing things like writing

automation code, that either is going to

help me be more profitable, because I can

do a deployment for a customer faster

and in a consistent way that helps my

security, or is there something I could

do, something unique that I can do

with a network that I couldn't do before

with just simple, you know, CLI, etc.?

And when we have these
discussions, it's been

awesome when I talk to these partners,

and I've had multiple. Like, I had one I

was talking to, and they said, hey, we

kind of have this DevOps practice that's

really focused on collaboration, and now

I'm learning about DevNet and all the

open APIs you have across your

entire portfolio. Boy, that seems like

there's a lot more we could do there. And

we started talking about it, and how on

average, partners find that they are

about three times more profitable by

doing DevOps-type practices than they

are doing just simple netops, you know,

rack and stack install kind of stuff. So

the profitability came in, and then

obviously, then differentiation. You know,

wow, if I could do something amazing, like

write an app that watches for, like, when

a badge reader triggers, and then the

camera sees that trigger and

matches that person's face with the

badge read. Wow, that would be amazing to

have an automated, like, security system.

Ironically, if you look up on the

Automation Exchange, there's already one

up there for Meraki

cameras and badge readers. So I was like,

wow, that was funny, they were just

talking about it, and now I see someone's

already uploaded that example. And that's

just one idea. So things like that, now

you can really differentiate and

leverage the network in new, unique ways

that allow you as a partner to say, hey,

you want to come work
with me, partner ABC,

because I have this capability in

context. The other part that's really

cool about that is as our partners

start getting more and more involved in

this global community, is that it lets

them shine, and see why do I want to

select, if I'm a customer, why do I want

to select this partner?
Wow, look at this,

they've got all this code uploaded. They

actually understand networking, beyond

just simple connections, but actually how

to articulate the network based on some

really business...you know,
real business use case.

And that ties right into some of

those certifications that we're having

coming out here shortly around DevNet.

So it's not just I'm a CCIE,
but I'm, like, a

rockstar developer, and I can showcase my

talent. So why do I as an individual, you

know, what's the value I have, but also as

a partner, what value does this partner

have, and why would I pick Partner A over

Partner B? Because I might be able to

get a better experience with that

partner. And then, you know,
then it really,

it just really grows
from there. So my point

simply is, by bringing this back, is being

able to leverage the open APIs and the

platform experience that we give, that I

blogged about, allows partners to really

change the game for
themselves and stand out.

And its core to their business

and how they're gonna go to the next,

you know, go to the next wave.

So that's really why DevNet and tying in

these communities and this automation

exchange is the, you know, the new

thing that we're adding, really helps

them change their business and

go to that next, you know, what the next

year's are gonna look like.

I like that you gave an
example that's already an

automation exchange. And I want to remind

the global community, it's not about, oh,

someone had that idea already, I wasn't

the first one to get that idea, and

that's not what matters. What matters is

building on each other's ideas, right,

because we can take it to the next level,

and that's what this is all about.

Share what you've built, and you'll be

surprised at how you can collaborate, not

just with people within Cisco, but with

other partners. Now, Bill, I want to come

back to a point that you made which is

really important, and I want to make sure

that people hear it. Partners, Cisco

partners that have a DevOps practice

tend to be three times more profitable?

Tell us more about that.

So I got that...I was talking to a partner

that's actually developed a really nice

DevOps practice. In fact, you know, I know

we're not doing product placement, but

I've got a little Panera cup here, and

that's the customer they wrote for.

And it's a public reference, so I'm

allowed to do that, but what's cool about

it, is this partner was telling me that

it wasn't just setting up the

network, but then they used their DevOps

practice that they built out and

invested in to then expand what

that company was able to do. And when I

talked to him about it,
I said wow, you know,

how did this change your business, and he

said well, you know, Bill, selling hardware

I get, you know, a certain amount of

profitability off selling your hardware.

When I attach my services to it, for

every dollar of service, I get about

three dollars...I've sold about three

dollars of hardware to get the same level

profitability when I attached my

services. When I attach my DevOps

practice and actually start coding, not

only do I get more stickiness for that

customer to allow them to do net new

things and change their business model,

but I get about a 9x over just selling

the hardware. So I sell you a piece of

gear, I make 1x profit, if I can sell you

some DevOps practice
and coding capabilities,

I'm making about 9x, so it's about

a factor of three times more

profitable than their traditional

service to sales model. So that was...that's

a direct quote from one partner.

I mean, your mileage is gonna vary, of

course, but that was...I was like, wow,

there it is. That's why
you should do this.

So I'm going to give any Cisco

partner watching out there some homework.

Go to
blogs.cisco.com/author/BillHentschell,

because he has been blogging about

this in the past year, and

you want to go back, do your homework

and get these step-by-step tips on how

to build a DevOps practice from Bill.

But I know he's going to be blogging a lot

more, so make sure you bookmark that.

blogs.cisco.com/developer/
author/BillHentschell

We have lots...

some questions coming in already. I have

to ask this one, some we'll save for the

end, because it means that someone we

care about a lot is paying attention.

Question from Stuart Clark on YouTube:

Who has the best, most awesome beard on

the DevNet team?

Oh my gosh, that would be me.

Sorry, Stuart.

I don't know my if mine actually

counts as a beard, but I would

say that when you have this, you know, the

darker on the top and the more, you know,

mature on the bottom, it just lends

itself to a brand of awesomeness that

you can't get with a one-color beard or

a length of beard, so I'm gonna say from

that perspective, it would be me, but

everybody's opinion is different, and

you know, well, I just have to,
you know, we can

agree to disagree, perhaps. maybe you

Maybe you don't have
the most awesome, big, evil

beard in the DevNet team, but a big

shout out to our teammates who are

man-ing and women-ing the social media

channels out there.
We're live on Cisco.com,

Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, so thank

you everyone for tuning in, and make sure

you keep sending us your questions,

and we will get to them before the end.

Automation exchange. I know you've heard

about code exchange, you've heard about

partner exchange, this is really that

next step of bringing all of that

together, learning from

somebody else's use cases, and adding

your own use cases. Automation exchange.

So, what is it? How do you submit a use

case step-by-step? John, can you show us

how to use it?

I can. So let me just set

this up for just a minute. You know, my

favorite part of going to the movies is

the previews. And, you know, you see

what's coming, what you're excited about,

what you think is, you know, junk, so

you know, you just, you know, and then

you make little quips to your...to whoever

you're there with. But here's the thing.

We have a full-length movie coming at

some point, but I did bring a clip

with me today, the control room has it. So

if you up in the control room,

if you would actually roll the clip, we

can go ahead and I'll take you through

the submission process. And if I could,

I'd like to change my answer,

it is Stuart, he has the best beard.

So you open up

a browser and go to
developer.cisco.com/automation.

It's really that simple.

And when you get to the automation

page, you'll see that we have

two buttons right at the top. One to view

all the use cases, which that's your

homework, do it on your own, and then

share a use case. That's what I want to

talk about today. You click that button,

it takes you to the case submission form,

or the use case submission form, you put

in a title, and in this case, the title is

'Ansible Playbooks for Configuring UCS

Network Interfaces and VLANs'. Give

me a two line technology summary, or put

the two line technology summary in the

form, and go ahead and add a two line

business summary.
Why did you do this? How

does it help your business? Has it helped

your day-to-day? And now give us a really

detailed use case description, as

detailed as you can possibly be, because

we're going to use this to determine,

you know, addition into the

automation exchange, and also so the

people using it know what it is all about.

So what's the use case for this one?

Automation at scale. I want to be able to

add these interfaces quickly. Pick the

domain. Well, it's a data center, but you

could pick others. So suppose it was a...

you know, it was beyond that.

What's the workflow?
This is day one configuration,

or day two configuration, perhaps. What

are the products that are being used

here? Again, this one's for UCS, but it

could be ACI, it could be an XLS. And

what's the stage?
Is it walk, run, and fly,

is it run, is it fly, whatever it may be.

And list the technologies used. So in this

case, it was Ansible. And they give us

some more information, the link to the

code exchange repo,
the name of a sandbox,

the link to a sandbox. Anything here that

can help somebody with this use case, a

video demo, a video tutorial. And once all

that's in there, click 'submit'. We get your

submission, we go through it, we look at

the repo and code exchange, we look at

the detail that you've given us, and we

determine the viability of putting this

out there in Automation Exchange.

It's really that simple.

So, there is a checking process

that happens in the background after a

submission is made?

Absolutely, you know,

we won't just click 'submit' and then it's

just out there.

It's click 'submit', our teams get

notified, we look at this, and so from a

domain perspective, if one, you know

I did that little clip there, so of course

I put UCS in, that's my favorite

technology. But now, I'm the domain expert

on that, but some other domain experts

will be pulled in for the technologies

that are utilized there. And, you know, we

may actually go ahead and run through

that code just to ensure, is this doing

what they said it would do? We'll look at

the code, you know, we'll make sure the

licensing is correct, so there's a lot of

things that come into play to make sure

that it really does fit into that, you

know, that section of DevNet, and it's

it's appropriate to be out there.

Well, that's good to know. So,

any use cases that are already there on

automation exchange have
gone through that process?

Any use cases that are out there, we

went over, we looked at code,

we ensured that the licensing was correct,

we ensured that this was something that

people could download and utilize, and

the providers are that, you know, are rest

assured that someone's using

their code. But we do want to make sure

that people understand, when you bring

something into your environment, you know,

tested fires to make sure it works for

you the way it should work, or you

expect it to work, you know, we do

expect you to, you know, make sure it's

good for you, and follow your best

practices within your environment
when you apply code like that.

This is super exciting, because

you know, you and I have been on the

DevNet team for almost three years now and

been following DevNet, like we were

talking about earlier before, and we see

that there are so many people that are

involved and have so much to contribute.

So this is an opportunity for them to

submit their use cases and really get

visibility for themselves, for their

organization, or their company. Tell us

more about walk, run, fly.
What does that mean?

So of course, you know, and just

a little bit on your last point

there was that, you know, people used to

come to these events and be like, "oh, I

really want to be part of DevNet, I

really want to do what you do, I want to

get out there and talk,
and I want to get...

and I want to write a blog", and now,

you know, this is how we can bring that

community in, wherever you are. You may

never get to go to an event because your

location, because of the, whatever the

resources are that you have, but if

you're that developer, if you're that

person, and you're in that scenario where

you can't make it to us, right? That

doesn't mean you can't be part of us.

This is how you can be part of us.

This is for everybody, everywhere, globally.

So, walk, run, fly.
Well, you know, we know

everybody can't be as seasoned as

everybody else, because it takes years to

get there, experience, etc.
And how do you do it,

right? You walk...well, you might have

crawled first. But you walk, and then you

run, and then you fly. And the walking

part is, let's get some data and

analytics from our environments, let's

just query it. Don't do anything

that might change configurations or...

let's walk, get some data and pull it out.

That's the walk part. The run part is

okay, well, now I got my data, and maybe

I'm gonna do some coding here to

let me change some configurations, right,

in, maybe a hands-on way, maybe at the

command line I still run a script, but I

have control over when that's running,

and I can see how it kind of plays

out, and it does this configuration for

me based on some data that it pulled. So

we're putting that walk and that run

together. And fly is really where it all

comes together. This is the exciting part,

because now we can take the automation

code that's there and put it into our

DevOps, our DevOps practices, right? So

where I can make a change to maybe a

configuration in an editor,
push that change to a

code repository. So I haven't documented.

I made the change when I did it, and I

pushed it to the code repository.

Well now, the code repository typically

has some kind of web hook that can be

triggered, and this is what's exciting. So

now, the code repository
says, oh, you made

a change, sends off this web hook, which

maybe the payload of that web book is

what changed, who changed it, when it was

changed, and it sends it off to a web

hook listener, whatever that may be.

Whether it's something in the cloud, or

it's something on a workstation

someplace in your data center, this web

hook gets...this payload gets delivered to

the web hook listener, the web hook

listener parses it, pulls out the data. It

says, oh, it's an update...
was made to this

playbook, the configuration was changed,

or we're adding something,

whatever it may be,
I'm going to run it.

And as exciting as that is,
right, from push

to your code repository, to the code

being run, and changing your

environment. The logs, and whatever may be

resulting from that change, well, they're

on that workstation. How about I take

those logs, right, you ready for this?

I'm ready.

I take those logs and I send it

to a collaboration, you know, endpoint,

where everybody in my team sees the

change that just happened, who did it,

when they did it, what the results were,

and now I have a historical record of

all that. The changes, that people get to

see it, that's the fly.

It's end-to-end DevOps enabled

automation, and that's
what we're talking about.

Start slow. Not slow, easy, better, best.

It really seems like a journey towards

community. which is fantastic. You

know, you feel, at first we might feel

like, oh, I'm doing this on my own, I

wonder if anyone out there is noticing.

Then you have something worth sharing,

and then you're improving the experience

for everybody. I love that we always

bring it back to community, and thank you

for explaining that. Now, I know Susie has

presented on this topic before, walk,

run, fly, and we have videos from DevNet

Create and Cisco Live U.S. So, SocialJulio

@SocialJulio, Julio Fernandez, who's

monitoring your questions reminded me to

remind you to go to the DevNet YouTube

channel and watch those videos and get

trained. And you can always go to

developer.Cisco.com and see the

complete list of places where you can

follow us on social, and you can make

@SocialJulio happy. Now, walk, run, fly,

I want to know how partners are doing

this, I want to know how our systems

engineers are doing this.
So, Bill, how are

you getting the word out to Cisco

partners about everything
that they can do with DevNet?

That's a nice one, Silvia.

So that's a big question.

A lot going on there, because there's so

many parts of DevNet, right? And so

the first thing that I have done is when

I meet with the partners, is I go and

I check in with them and find out

things like, do you even have a DevNet

practice, or DevOps
practice, I should say.

And if you do, have you marketed, are you

aware of it? And if not, are there things

that we can do with our connection to

DevNet to help you market and

take advantage of it? And so that's the

first part of just the introduction, it's

just having those face-to-face meetings

and talking about what their strategy is

around DevOps, and how they're

interfacing and being part of the DevNet

community can expand what they're

doing already. As I said before, I've

found some of these partners maybe have

a DevOps practice, but it's limited to a

certain area. You know, we only do it when

we're talking into Juror AWS, we hadn't

even thought about some of the things we

could do on the network. And then tying

it back to, wow, you know, if you

thought about this more broadly, as

you're bringing applications down from,

let's say, AWS, to having a network

automatically identify and apply policy

to make sure you're getting proper

access, and throughput, and quality of

service, etc. could then extend that out.

Oh my god, I didn't
even think about that.

So that's one area. The other area is

just doing things, like going to Cisco

Live, and encouraging our partners, and

sending message to our partners to make

sure they're showing up at all the DevNet

events going on at, whether it was

Cisco Live U.S., or the upcoming one in

Cancun and Cisco Live LATAM,

which I hope to see a lot of you there,

and I know that'll be a great

time. But that's another area where we

make sure they're aware of this

opportunity to be part of this bigger

community. And then the third thing that

I've been focusing on in my role is, we

do, Cisco...there's a lot of investments

in our partners, because you said at the

beginning, partners are so critical to

our business. And with over 10,000

partners spread across the Americas, to

make sure we're touching them and make

sure we're investing, is that we write

contracts with them, investment contracts

that say, hey, if you go build out your

DevOps practice, we'll help you. And so,

for partners that are
really digging in and

and really want to co-invest and don't

really know how to get going, we have

people on my team that are going in and

actually helping them through investments

of people, and dollars, and connecting

them back to DevNet so that they can

see what the opportunity is beyond

what's going on, right? As I talked about

a minute ago, about that, you know, trying

to increase profitability so much for

them, I mean, that's huge for them.

So, those are different ways that

we're getting the message out, and then

of course, making sure everybody in

America's partner organization is aware

of the opportunity that DevNet provides

for our partners and how they can get

involved. It's really the next way.

If you even see our senior leaders, we're

going to impact, as you know here, coming

up the end of August, which is our

big sales event. We have everybody from

around the globe all comes in to Las

Vegas, and we share best practices, ideas,

we talk about the fiscal year we ended,

and what the big focuses for next year.

Well, guess what? DevNet,
DevOps practices,

all the open APIs, that's a huge focus

of this coming impact, and we're gonna be

talking about that. We have a lot of

partners that show up and want to hear

what's the latest, where we focus, what's

the top of mind for Cisco, and as you

mentioned already, Sylvia and John, is

Susie, this is huge, top of mind for Susie

and Chuck, it's gonna be all over our

impact. So I think that's just gonna help

spread the word even more, on top of what

little old me can do.

But keep spreading the word,

and we are admiring your

stickers. Look at all the
stickers. He

has Debbie, he has a Barcelona Debbie, he

has a little come to the community

Debbie, he has a Silvia sticker.

He's a team player.

Yeah, we're liking this.

There's a Julio sticker over here,

too, let's not forget all the

swag, you know. I got that, and then I've

got, you know, even on the back of the

phone. I'm a little bit of a fanboy.
Little bit.

Every sticker counts,
and we appreciate it. We

want people to, you know, re-skill

themselves to learn new skills. Now,

we rely heavily on our systems engineers,

so we're gonna go back to Patrick and

ask him, how do you and everyone in your

organization make the time to learn

these new skills? Because we're relying

on you, but how do you stay up-to-date

with everything that's coming at you

from DevNet, and from
the community at large?

Great question. You really do have

to find the time to really...you have to

make time to get these new skills. And it

is, as other videos, you have kind of ask

the question around developer engineer,

it really is that hybrid approach to

being a developer and an engineer, taking

both of those skill sets, and honing

them, right? So, you've got a lot of guys

out there that are definitely heavily

certified in the network realm and

bringing their software
skills up to speed.

They'll be a rare breed, indeed, at least,

especially right now, and how important

it's going to be to continue that

path. We've said it before, maybe

a little cliche at this point, but

definitely the developer.Cisco.com

page. And right there in the front, I

think this was introduced right before

Cisco Live San Diego, but you've got this

nice little getting started, there's like

six circles there, and the far left is

that 'start now'.
And we talked a lot about

this when we were at Cisco Live in San

Diego. They kind of introduced this, kind

of getting started section in the DevNet

zone, and it's just a great place to

find, how do you start the coding 101

skills? We talked about the fundamentals

around Python, the fundamentals around

what APIs are and how they're used.

You've got learning tracks there, as well,

on that front page, where you can go

in and kind of pick a path, and there's

different modules within that path that

can kind of help you move on, depending

on what architecture you want to explore.

There's a video course there, also,

presented by Hank Preston. He does

another great job just, kind of

building those foundations. And of course,

there's the sand boxes, where you can go

in and basically turn up some

equipment that you might need, whether

it's routing devices, or other

collaboration devices, security, all those

pieces are there to spin up and start to

play, and start to get to know, and get

comfortable with the programmability

around those pieces. And of course, now we

have the Network Automation
Exchange as well.

So I'd say beyond that, beyond jumping

into the 'start now' part, is also maybe

just get a study partner, someone that

you can get with daily to kind of push

you along. Stuart Clark has kind of been

mine, not only he helped me with my beard,

but also just in terms of the next level,

as far as, you know, Python just to kind

of exploring different places we're

going to. Hey, I found this,
you know, kind

of, you may want to try this. There's some

different books around how to kind of

bring your skills to the next level, as

well. So that's that's been helpful. And

also, whether you're going to Cisco Live,

or internal to Cisco and you're going to

Impact, definitely go by the DevNet Zone

there, and just spend time there, and

kind of soak in some of the knowledge.

Then obviously, take that knowledge and

do the hands-on. That's how I

learn is just doing the hands-on,

continuing to practice and seeing the

results and find out, especially if

there's errors, right? Never be afraid of

doing something wrong, because that's,

again, how you learn, how you

troubleshoot, how you get
comfortable with those pieces.

We always have to keep learning,

we always have to keep working

at getting better at what we do and what

we love to do. Now, I know all three of

you are going to want to answer these

questions that are coming in. It's

around the same topic, DevNet

certifications. Who wants to go first?

Bill, I know you wanted to talk about

DevNet certifications.
You want to go first?

Sure. What's the questions about
DevNet certification, Silvia?

How will it help my career,

when will they be ready? I can say

that that's coming later in 2020,

actually. Why should I look into DevNet

certifications? So, we're getting a lot of

questions around DevNet certifications.

Awesome. Well, you know,
I mean, obviously, I

can look at this two ways. One is through

the partner lens, the area
that I specialize in.

And that's, again, I mentioned
before, how do I

differentiate myself as a partner? So, you

know, Cisco, our bread and butter is our

certifications. Early in the days when

people started reselling Cisco product,

one of the big things that helped them

differentiate themselves was our

traditional certifications, our CCNA, NP,

CCIE being the, you know, the flagship

certification across the tech industry.

And that brings a level of credibility

to any individual, whether they be

working for a partner, or out on their

own, or working in a customer. You know,

that is one of the most sought-after

certifications, because it demonstrates a

level of competence and capability at

the expert level. You know if you have

somebody with that certification, you

have an expected outcome.
Well, on the DevNet

side, now having similar

certifications that have those stages

where you've got, like, the basic, the

intermediate, and the advanced versions

that are coming out, you can demonstrate

to whether it be your employer, your

partner, or to other individuals, that

you have a level of skill and competence

in being able to leverage the API that's

across all of Cisco's products, and

you're able to create net new things. You

tie that in, a certification with

something like the Automation Exchange

where you can show
that you're a contributor.

You know, it's the same way, like, you

think a github, where you go
on there and you

can see if you're contributing, and

you're in there, and adding on, as

John highlighted, you know, we got, you've

got a base thing, and then now you've

added on and extend it even further,

those are areas that can highlight your

skill as either a partner community, or

as an individual, and ideally those go

hand-in-hand. So, both the certifications

are coming up and leveraging these

platforms and all these different code

exchanges that we're now offering DevNet

is a way to really highlight the

value of you. And certification path, I

mean, like I said before, that's

really the bread and butter of Cisco

and how you can show that, and

demonstrate that. So if a customer gets

engaged with a partner and you say, hey,

I've got five DevNet experts certified

on there, wow, then I know
that you're probably

somebody I want to do business with,

versus yeah, I do some coding,

right? So I think it shows a

lot of that, and I think, just like CCIE

does, I have a feeling, don't know, but I

have a feeling, the long run, when it

comes to things like salary, which we all

care about, having a certification like

that shows that you have that capability,

and you can probably demand a

little bit higher salary. So I think

there's some personal and

family gratification there, too.

Patrick, John, anything
you want to add to that?

To the certifications,
I would just say that, you

know, for the DevNet associate, that is

really going to, like Bill said, give that

person, you know, the confidence. You know,

they pass that test, it gives them the

confidence to be able to say, yeah, I

understand programmability, yeah this is

something that I can do, and do for you.

When you get to the DevNet professional

level, or the specialist, and you've

concentrated in an area, well, now, you

know, it's not just programmability that

you know, but I know this area, or these

areas. So we're really helping people

quantify their capabilities, so that when

they do go out, whether it's a job that

they're looking for, or a job that they

already have, they say, it's not just me

saying I can do this,

Cisco said I know how to do this, and

that's what's really important
about the certifications.

That's very powerful, and

I want to ask more about how do you

choose an area to specialize in? I mean,

you're our data center expert, we know

that. Patrick, I want to take it back to

you, how do you choose what you want to

specialize in, and can you change once

you've made that choice,
how hard is it to change?

I don't, I mean, to answer the first, or

the second part first, I don't think it's

hard to change at all if you specialize.

And what's nice about the way that the

certifications are now being presented,

especially from, you know, a CCNP level,

right, is that you can...
if you're in your,

whatever you're doing and the IT, you

know, in your company, and you're really

focused on one piece very heavily, you

can go ahead and get that specialist, you

can go ahead and get that CCNP around that

specialty certification, and then

you can explore other pieces,
as well, right?

So you can go into other

specialties as well. So I think it's

very flexible. You can kind of make your

own career path around certifications.

And to John's point, as well, is that,

I'll add to that in that what we're

seeing this the automation piece go into

both directions, right? We're definitely

seeing it in the CCNP, we're gonna see it

in CCIE. It's already in, you know, DevNet

associates, it's already in DevNet

professional. All of this is going across,

all the certification portfolio.

To learn...to learn this automation,

to learn how to program is the way

networks are going to be built, they have

to be built. Like I said before, given the

speed of how things are moving, the speed

of the business, again, these

pressures that IT teams are feeling, we

have to be able to do this in a manner

that is automated, and so I think you're

seeing that presented across all those

certifications because of that.

Can I add one more thing about this?

Sure.

Whether it's Bill, or Patrick, or myself,

you know, we can't answer all the

questions about certifications just off

the top of our head,
especially for DevNet,

because they're so new, and these

things are, you know, the information

that's out there is, you know, more than I

think one person, you know,
in here can just,

you know, put out in the time that

we have. So if you really want to know

about DevNet certifications,

developer.Cisco.com/certification.

That's easy to remember. Say that again.

Developer.Cisco.com/certification.

So it's very easy to remember. All your

answers are there. Not only are your

answers there, the way that this part of

the DevNet site's been set up is that when

you're looking at different certifications,

we actually give you some

links to these labs, to these sandboxes,

so get those skills together.

And you can start studying
now if you're interested

in going for your DevNet certification,

which won't happen until,
I believe, February of 2020.

February 2020, that's correct.

You can start forming your
study group, studying now,

getting ready, you know, finding people

like John on Twitter to ask questions. We

should probably mention Ryan Rose. If

anyone's got most of the answers to the

DevNet certifications...

He's the one. Ryan is the one.

@RyanRose. Tell him we sent you.

We also mentioned, too, that Matt

Johnson just did a blog post yesterday

around the DevNet certifications, as

well, so just another resource out there,

along with Ryan Rose.

And if you follow us on Twitter
@CiscoDevNet, you will

see there that we are having a series of

webinars around certification to get you

ready for 2020. But today, we wanted to

really focus on Automation Exchange. And

help me out here, that's

developer.Cisco.com/automation.

We try to make it easy to remember.

Bill, the last question of the day
is for you, and it's

a question from David Fernandez,
who says...

well, he says awesome jobs,
Silvia, Bill, and Patrick,

so thank you, David,
and the question is...oh, and

John. So the question is, partners that

believe that they're "too small" to engage

with programmability,
what can they do to get started?

I get that question a lot.

You know, there's a couple things there.

I don't think there is such thing as too

small for programmability, because

programmability is an individual

thing. So at a minimum, you should have

somebody in your staff, usually

it's an engineer or somebody who has a

passion around development, get involved

at least at a basic level, around DevOps

and understand some basic things, you

know, ansible, puppet,
Teradata a few those

things. But if you really want to have,

like, a full-on DevOps practice, and you

feel that you're too small to make that

investment, you can't bring a cadre of

coders in to go build a bunch of code,

and get up there,
there's a couple things you can do.

Well, you can go look at the Automation

exchange and go see what codes out there

had maybe you can take part of that, and

if you just have that one person, you can

add on to it.
That's one thing you could do.

Another thing you can do is, we have a

lot of, we call them DSi partners, we have

a lot of partners that don't actually

resell Cisco hardware, so they're not

competitive to our partners, but they

specialize in things like a DevOps

practice, and you can partner with them.

So you have a customer that has a unique

need, you want to use our APIs to

articulate the network, to maybe deliver a

different or better application

experience, you can partner with other

partners that aren't resellers, that all

they focus on is things like DevOps.

And then another
thing you can do is,

there's also, we call it practice as a

service, we also have other enablement

partners that you can work with that

will actually provide those kind of

services on, like, a subscription-basis.

And it does two things: not only do you

get the capacity you need today, but they

actually start training individuals in

your partner org to become skilled up

in that, so that then you can offer that

as a skill and you can start to build

that practice, and figure out kind of

that same idea of the walk, run, fly. You

can start walking and figure out, get

your toe in the water, figure out if

DevOps is the right thing for your

business model, and then if you see that

there's good revenue to be made, maybe you

start making some investments and you

augment it with these services, as a

service, the DevOps as a service, and then

maybe you build out a full practice. Or

maybe decide that's not your model, and

you just could continue partnering

when it's needed. But, you know, again, I

think it's...the way to think about

it is, it's I'm not too small. And I think

some of the code you'll see out there in

the Automation Exchange or code exchange

stuff, you'll see how simple it is. Just

grabbing insights, I mean, this is back to

that walk concept, just to be able to

grab insights out of the network using

code that's already there, you probably

can already have a different impact on

your end customer, because you can see

things like, from the rocky dashboard, oh,

where's everybody at? I can get

some inventory around wireless

networking and where

users, where devices are. You can then

move into, well, maybe I'll just add a

little automation, because it'll help my

NetOps practice. Again, you know...

I'll give you another example. On the

Automation Exchange right now is code

you can grab right now
that goes to Annexus

and just checks for all the optical

connections. So you're
racking and stacking,

your wiring up, you're plugging in a

bunch of fiber ports, and you have a

problem. Man, if you just grab this code,

you can see that port 23, actually maybe

you didn't click it in all the way, and

it's not, or there's a problem

on the connection and it's not

transmitting properly. So just using that

little snippet of code, you can

already help your business practice, even

if it's just more of a NetOps, kind of

get things configured and set up. And so

that's how another way to kind of walk

in. So again, to me, there is no such

thing as I'm too small to DevOps.

It's just how you really want to use

DevOps. You might be too small to have a

full-blown DevOps practice, but that's a

business model that we can help work you

with. And myself, and the other

leaders in the partner community

globally, in our global partner

organization, or regional, in this case

Americas partner organization, we're here

to help you go on that journey.
Just let us know.

That sounds like a great

invitation. So if you've been

following Bill, if you've been following

this webcast today, you can go back, you

can see what his Twitter handle is, and

make sure that you reach out anytime. We

have very social people here. John, you

wanted to add something?

I did, and I thought that...
and I thought this for a while.

We have developer.Cisco.com,

and maybe that URL is a little

intimidating to people.
Why would I go there?

I'm not a developer. And so I thought, for

those people, I'd like to add,
think about that URL as

I want to be a developer.Cisco.com,

because that's where you're

going to go to learn the basics, to learn

the tools. I remember as a,
you know, young

kid helping my dad fix cars, and he would

say, hand me that, you know, 7/16th.

And the first time out, I didn't know

what that was. And he's
like, oh, you know,

the, whatever, it's that one.

Well, that's what DevNet is. It's your...

think of it, you're with your dad, learning

how to fix cars, or maybe you're with

your dad learning how to bake a cake.

Wherever you were with somebody who

mentored you through something. I want to

be a developer.Cisco.com. That's how

you should think about this. And never,

ever, be intimidated. We don't have, you

know, egos. We want to help,
we want you to succeed.

We want you to succeed. What a

great thought to give to our community.

And thank you both. I want to thank

everyone who's helped us be successful

today. What a great Cisco chat. Thank you,

Greg, thank you, Cisco TV, thank you, Julio,

Diaria, David, Stuart, everyone who

asked questions.
And Patrick, Bill, any final thoughts?

Hey, I do want to say something.

Just a quick thank you

to John McDonough, because it was because

of him about two years ago when I first

saw his managing Cisco UCS with Amazon

Alexa video—it's actually on YouTube, if

you want to go watch it—with that video

really sort of a data center, you know,

kind of a little bit of a data center

specialist I was, I got to see that and

really that was kind of my point that I

took off really wanting to know more

about DevNet and how all these pieces, the

programmability pieces work together.

So I just want to say thank you to John.

That...I can't tell you
what I'm feeling right

now, I'm like, a little tingly, because...

not being facetious or

silly at all, that is what I want to have

happen when I make that video, or when I

stand up at an event, or if I write a

blog post, that's what. I want

someone to say I want to do that, and to

know that that Patrick was inspired by

something I did, I can't tell you how

grateful I am,

or gratified I am to hear something like

that. And kudos to you for

putting that effort in. That's great.

Wow, I'm feeling the love here.

And John, we'll have to have you
back out to Atlanta

sometime, too, for some
more UCS programmability.

Bill, do you want to thank anyone?

Well, yeah. Wow, several people, actually.

You know, Silvia, I want to thank

you, because you and I have been partners

in crime for years. I mean, when I

used to run Enterprise Routing globally

and got to see you at every Cisco Live,

whether it was in Europe, or down in

Melbourne, which is also one of my

favorite spots to go, we always had a

great partnership, and spread the word,

and finding someone that shares the same

passion around DevOps and what we can do

with, it was wonderful. And then the

other person is Susie We. I mean, Susie, to

take something that was so nascent, and

build it out to where it is,
and, you know,

there's no charge for this stuff. You

know, you go on and you can learn this,

and have this all exposed, and really to

change the way Cisco goes to market is

incredible. So yeah, I mean, I just...

the whole, you know, whether

it's Julio, or John, or Patrick, or you, I

just...the whole DevNet team has been

awesome to work with, and so

supportive of the partners and everybody

in the channel. I know that all the

partners love everything you guys are

doing for us. And so I just want to say

thank you to the whole team.

And on that note, we'll say thank you to our audience

for tuning in, and of course, to everyone

who was part of today's show. My message

for everyone is, to quote what, really all

of you have said in this past hour, be

the person with that passion. That's what

the world needs. Thank you

[Music]