As developers continue to become the new kingmakers, Cisco Systems Inc. has built up a new developer framework that is being built on top of networks, called Cisco DevNet, that is now 500,000 strong.

“When we were pushing it, we were just saying, ‘Hey, the network is changing. The network is going to be programmable. The network is going to have APIs,” said Susie Wee (pictured), vice president and chief technology officer of DevNet Innovations at Cisco Systems Inc. “And since then … people have jumped in. … And here at the Cisco Live, what we’re seeing is that people are ready to code.”

Wee spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Cisco Live event in Orlando, Florida. They discussed the story of DevNet and why it’s been so successful. (* Disclosure below.)

Building a developer program

In 2014, Cisco got the OK to begin a developer program. They began to have a developer conference at Cisco Live in 2014. And people really were interested. “It was packed,” Wee said. “It was just like wall to wall of people who were excited to learn about software.”

Now, 500,000 people have registered for DevNet. “Now we have a community of people who are getting up on network APIs; we have a community of people who can develop,” she added.

While there is no formula for building a developer community, Wee said that it’s been very fortunate to have grown so much. There are some interesting reasons for success, including a very welcoming environment for developers who want to learn, meeting them where they are, and not creating this program in a silo.

“We’ve been doing it with our sales organization, with our partner organization. We’ve been doing it with our ecosystem and our partners and out there,” Wee said. “We’ve just continuously been doing it based on what their needs are.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Cisco Live event. (* Disclosure: Cisco Systems Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Cisco nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE