As Cisco Systems Inc. pushes further into software services, can the networking giant craft differentiated and automated solutions in an ecosystem readily dialing into multicloud trends?

Looking to answer this and other questions, SiliconANGLE is at Cisco Live, currently underway in Barcelona, with exclusive commentary and interviews from the livestreaming studio theCUBE. Coverage will begin at 10:30 a.m. CEST Tuesday, Jan. 29, and end at 4:30 p.m. CEST Thursday, Jan. 31. (* Disclosure below.)

The rise of cloud computing has left legacy hardware companies in the precarious position of pivoting to software-led products, all of which must work across the gamut of cloud platforms. For Cisco, that means virtualizing the management of the network and plugging into cloud infrastructure where it’s used the most: a hybrid of on-premises data centers and public cloud, of which Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and IBM are the dominant players.

The global hybrid cloud market is expected to surpass $100 billion USD over the next five years, boosted by growing data volumes and demand for computing agility, from the bottom of the computing stack to the edge of the network where smartphones and connected sensors live. Cisco, now in the midst of its own modernization efforts, looks to be the glue binding the countless components of multicloud environments.

Spare no expense

Looking to grow core network offerings and diversify its portfolio for multicloud opportunities, investments were already underway at Cisco to address internet of things, artificial intelligence, networking security, and other critical enterprise needs.

“Cisco is decades old; they were building the foundation of the internet,” said James Kobielus, an analyst with Wikibon, SiliconANGLE Media’s sister market research company. “Many still see Cisco as a hardware vendor; that’s their core. But everyone else in the networking space had to go deep in the cloud to survive.”

With its eye on a software transition, Cisco acquired application performance management provider AppDynamics Inc. for $3.7 billion to improve visibility throughout the production environment. Just a few months later, the company acquired rival software-defined networking company, Viptela Inc., for $610 million to supplement its own SDN technologies.

Cisco later added Springpath Inc. to its arsenal to the tune of $320 million, leveraging the company’s hyperconvergence storage controller within the Cisco Unified Computing System for the industry’s first fully integrated hyperconvergence system. With a $2.35 billion acquisition of multicloud security company Duo Security Inc. and $1.9 billion spend on communication software provider Broadsoft Inc., Cisco continues to prove it will spare no expense in the name of optimizing its software portfolio.

“Cisco is going through a massive transformation,” said Stu Miniman, an analyst with Wikibon. “Cisco of the future will be a software company, [and] I don’t just mean taking networking and making it software-defined. Cisco is branching out beyond networking.”

In a direct play for hybrid cloud, Cisco partnered with Amazon in its Cisco Hybrid Solution for Kubernetes on AWS. The solution combines the Cisco Container Platform, a fortified framework for Kubernetes, with the agility and scope of AWS Cloud for more streamlined container management between the platforms and environments.

“Cisco is not de-emphasizing the network, but looking at the future they realize they need to do more in cloud,” Miniman said.

With a head start in cloud and a vast developer network, AWS has staked its claim in this next frontier of digital evolution. But initiatives like Cisco’s hybrid container solution and the automation of SDN tasks illustrate the company’s unique utility in the multicloud space and appear to be just the beginning of its new software game plan.

Cisco’s primary value-add will come from its ability to solve the challenges of intercloud, the crucial data exchange across environments currently straining enterprise networking, according to Kobielus.

So far, the strategy appears to be paying off. Cisco showed a positive first quarter with revenue up 8 percent year over year, to $13.1 billion, surpassing market expectations and inspiring confidence after a few years of decline. Last year, the company was recognized as a leader in three Gartner Magic Quadrants: unified communications, worldwide contact center infrastructure and meetings solutions. “I’m sure Cisco will still have their roots in networking, but software is its future,” Miniman said.

Will Cisco’s myriad acquisitions prove fruitful in the company’s software journey? And can Cisco ultimately survive in a broader multicloud ecosystem where it’s no longer the center of its market? All this and more will be explored at this years conference.

Keynote speakers include David Goeckeler, executive vice president and general manager of Cisco’ Networking and Security Business, and Larry Brilliant, an epidemiologist, author and tech innovator.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

SiliconANGLE offers various ways to watch all of theCUBE interviews that will be taking place at Cisco Live in Barcelona, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s event on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE’s dedicated website and Ustream

All of theCUBE’s exclusive interviews from Cisco Live will be available on theCUBE’s dedicated website.

You can also watch all the interviews on the dedicated Ustream channel.

Watch on the SiliconANGLE YouTube channel

All of theCUBE interviews from Cisco Live, which runs from Jan. 27 to Feb. 1, will also be loaded onto SiliconANGLE’s dedicated YouTube channel.

Cubecasts

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on both SoundCloud and iTunes.

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE include Cisco Live speakers Todd Nightingale, senior vice president and general manager, Meraki, Cisco; Liz Centoni, senior vice president and general manager of IoT, Cisco; Susie Wee, senior vice president and chief technology officer, DevNet, Cisco; Roland Acra, senior vice president and general manager of data center, Cisco; and Sachin Gupta, senior vice president of enterprise networking, Cisco.

Other guests include Guillermo Diaz, chief information officer and senior vice president, Cisco; Prakash Rajamani, director product management, Cisco; Gordon Thomson, vice president, global enterprise networking, Cisco; Bret Hartman, chief technology officer, Cisco Security Group; and Lynn Lucas, chief marketing officer, Cohesity.

TheCUBE’s lineup also includes Dave Cope, senior director, market development, Cisco Cloud Platform & Solutions Group; Wendy Mars, president, Cisco EMEAR; Todd Nightingale, senior vice president and general manager, Cisco Meraki; and Liz Centoni, senior vice president and general manager of IoT, Cisco.

To check out the complete lineup of guests appearing on theCUBE during Cisco Live in Barcelona, visit theCUBE’s event page.

Livestream of Cisco Live

If you can’t attend the Cisco Live event in Barcelona, you can watch the event livestream here. (* Disclosure: Some segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE are sponsored and will be identified. Sponsors have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Image: Cisco