Technology is changing the way we communicate dramatically, especially in professional environments. In early January, an outage on popular collaboration platform Slack caused mass workplace hysteria that spread like wildfire across Twitter and other social platforms, likely decreasing productivity more than the outage itself. Despite the short lapse, Slack and other messaging platforms are quickly transforming the way we work. As the largest networking company in the world, Cisco Systems Inc. is working to circumvent such scenarios, innovating in modern communication and improving collaboration processes for businesses, including developer operations.

“Everything from Cisco’s traditional business … is becoming developed and run and managed by software. … Everything is becoming open and … and connected together,” said Adam Kalsey, Cisco Spark developer relations at Cisco Systems.

Kalsey 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 work with its collaboration suite Spark and developer program DevNet, and how these programs are working to integrate with customers’ existing processes to improve communications overall. (* Disclosure below.)

Adopting developer-first

Through all its initiatives born in the era of digital transformation, Cisco has worked toward the ultimate goal of removing enterprise silos to enhance communications. With much of its customers’ daily work happening in messaging outside email, the company has employed Spark, an integrated messaging network, to streamline internal networking processes.

“The idea is eliminate those islands … and either bring those products into Cisco products or bring the Cisco technologies into those other products,” Kalsey said.

Spark works well for Cisco customers at every level, as it plugs into existing infrastructure where needed. “Companies have massive investments in their communications infrastructure. … That’s why our hybrid strategy is so effective, because you can use all of … those investments … but also take advantage of the cloud,” Kalsey stated.

Employing a hybrid strategy gives customers the opportunity to take advantage of cloud benefits like rapid deployment and upgrade cycles, and Cisco’s focus on enterprise enables it to structure services around top-down network upgrades that solve for networking issues company-wide.

In addition to communication innovations, Cisco is working to fundamentally change product development processes through its DevNet initiative, a program created to support developers looking to build and test applications integrated with Cisco products.

“A lot of things becoming developer focused and developer friendly, and products are being developed with a developer-first mindset,” Kalsey said.

Looking ahead, Kalsey is encouraged by the response to DevNet and excited to see how all Cisco’s initiatives transform customer processes, as well as Cisco itself. “[Our] classrooms are too small to hold the amount of interest that’s there,” 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.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE