With the developer community on full display during DevNet Create this week, Cisco Systems Inc.’s management team, led by Chief Executive Officer Chuck Robbins, has demonstrated the appeal of network programmability. That’s in keeping with a promise Cisco’s leader made to one prominent analyst.

“One of the very first things Chuck Robbins ever said to me when he took over as CEO was, he promised me that Cisco would listen to customers and if there was something that’s good for customers, Cisco would lead that effort,” said Zeus Kerravala (pictured), founder and principal analyst at ZK Research. “In order for DevNet to work, they had to open up the network. Ultimately, that’s good for customers; you can build applications that add value to that network.”

Kerravala spoke with John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the DevNet Create event in Mountain View, California. They discussed Cisco’s value proposition for its platform and the importance of leveraging a partner-driven sales channel to take advantage of DevNet’s success (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

IT world comes to Cisco

The growth of Cisco’s developer community has validated an approach that used the company’s APIs to make networks fully programmable. The result has been to offer a platform where others can create and add value.

“One of the trends that’s helping Cisco is that information technology and the world has come to them,” Kerravala said. “If you look today at the trends around digital transformation, the technologies that are driving that are internet of things, mobility, cloud computing, artificial intelligence. Those are all network-centric paradigms.”

Will Cisco’s all-important partner ecosystem understand the network-centric approach and be able to leverage the power of the company’s DevNet community? The roadmap is there, according to Kerravala.

“Cisco is a reseller-led company, a partner-led company; 90% of their sales go through the partner channel,” Kerravala stated. “Partners need to understand that if they embrace DevNet, embrace a lot of the applications, they’re going to have more strategic relationships with customers, their deal sizes will go up, they’ll have better margins, and it will put them in a better position as well.”

That message will most likely be a critical part of Cisco’s near-term strategic focus. The question is whether it can be translated into a promising revenue stream for the networking giant.

“What’s next is they have to find a way to get the general Cisco salesperson to sell this, to understand the value, and I’m not so sure it’s there,” Kerravala said. “They have a massive partner community. This now has to become part of that partner sale.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the DevNet Create event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the DevNet Create event. Neither Cisco Systems Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE