

The renaissance of software development through digital transformation has encouraged innovation from a range of technology industry leaders. Developers are gaining greater visibility and recognition in working processes, and the integration of stack from network to application is becoming a top priority for businesses working to streamline functions and improve efficiency.
As a part of an effort to innovate in networking and communications, Cisco Systems Inc. is working to support these developer operations cultural changes through its DevNet community initiative.
“One of the things we’re trying to do is foster the DevOps culture. To do that, an [operations] person has to understand and have empathy for the problems that exist on the application side and vice versa. We’re trying to educate people in that vein,” said Ashley Roach (pictured), principal engineer and cloud/API evangelist, DevNet, at Cisco Systems.
Roach sat down with John Furrier (@furrier) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Cisco Live event in Barcelona, Spain. They discussed Cisco’s DevNet developer program and how the community is contributing to tech’s overall shift toward breaking down working silos. (* Disclosure below.)
Through the DevNet ecosystem, Cisco hopes to foster a cultural shift toward integrated processes by providing tools and resources that enable more community supported work. “It used to be you had one programming book and you’d … copy code from that. … Today with the vast amount of resources that are available online … the universe of educational material for people to understand this and get started is awesome,” Roach said.
The DevNet learning labs provide tutorials, code samples, example projects, and other open-source tools to encourage productivity and collaboration. “We’re big contributors to OpenStack. … We’ve created a [container networking interface] module for Kubernetes called Contiv. … It’s a long legacy of open-source at Cisco; it’s part of our culture,” Roach said.
DevNet interest has been ramping up over the last few years, with Cisco placing an increasing focus on software innovation and DevOps cultural development. Through its developer program and DevNet Create, the company is building a community to solve the problems at the intersection of applications and infrastructure.
“We want people to come in and have the opportunity to sit down [and] … be able to work through tutorials … or learn about the DevNet sandbox,” Roach said.
Cisco has developed the DevNet program to be fundamentally experiential, giving users the opportunity to plug into unexpected use cases and create solutions in real time. “We have some “internet of things” collaboration use cases that we’re demonstrating. … If you combine that IoT capability with that collaboration that’s already going to be there, you’re getting a win-win of that infrastructure in the rooms,” he said.
With Cisco’s progress in this initiative growing exponentially, Roach looks forward to seeing what the future holds for DevNet. “We want to continue this conversation about DevOps; how applications and infrastructure can benefit each other,” he concluded.
Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Cisco Live Barcelona 2018. (* Disclosure: Cisco Systems Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Cisco Systems nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)
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