In 2023, the cloud will take networking jobs (and kill Cisco)?

old guy like me you know Cloud's gonna kill Cisco there's a lot of things that were predicted to kill let's go ahead and asked if we were saying the dead are living longer than you know exactly we see this and you know there's not a judgment it's just large Cloud providers will do this because there's really a benefit to optimize yeah Enterprise it's it's it's like instead of you buying a car because you need to drive it's like I buy a kit and I build the car yeah so there's there's a there's a cost of opportunity where do you invest right it's and if you're trying to figure out how to get faster from A to B you're rather looking like what's the infrastructure what's the road I need and what car do I need and I was like what's the best engine in the car oh hey everyone David Bumble back with a very special guest at Cisco live Thomas welcome hey hey David good to meet you here it's great I mean you you just spoke offline you you know someone else who I've interviewed hang Preston yes I do I'm actually I work with them yeah uh join customers yeah he's a lot of fun so tell me we were talking offline as well a bit about your background um I'm obviously traditional routing and switching old man yeah people watching um there's been big changes you know in the data center traditional routing and switching yeah you said cloud is everywhere now cloud is everywhere take us on a journey you know in sort of in your experience what's happened and like how you know tell us a bit about yourself the journey to cloud and like things I need to worry about everything you were number one when you open up this old man I was like I'm feeling like the same but anyway uh thanks for the reminder 21 21 there we go listen I I'm responsible for the for the data set networking portfolio in Cisco yep uh Johnny the cloud I mean you know cloud has used a lot as a term yeah I see it I see probably multiple aspects one is clear what I think most people sing is cloud is public Cloud yeah uh and discussion around what workloads particularly in the data center space are going to be run in a cloud versus on-prem and the escort Frank is a lot of interesting transition and reality check what I see over the last couple years but the other part of cloud is really more around the operations model which I think is equally important and interesting quite frankly which is actually really impacting to your point the people running the networks because what happens there I think is really what what changes uh how do you operate and I actually think it's a good thing quite frankly uh the the analogy I have since you mentioned routing switching yeah we used to say hey if a network runs don't touch it exactly uh bad bad right in my personal opinion I'm not I'm not you know it's it's it's it's really a reflection on in the Posse configured I never touched it again which was fine yeah right whereas now it's really what you want is you want to readjust you want to configure you want to be able to to have infrastructure as a service kind of and that really means you want to be comfortable changing and so this brings us over to a why people expect that because of cloud but why what people want to do is operate the infrastructure like they would have access to a cloud and so yeah these are some of the interesting changes I see and where where Cloud fits so I mean this traditional Network guy it's it's quite a change in I've got to learn kubernetes I've got to learn Docker I've got to learn like Security in the cloud it's it's like crazy amount of stuff to learn yeah at the same time uh I I think you know uh everybody Cooks this water is probably number one I think the important point is if you if you think where your question is going if you're a networking guy typical routing switching guy number one uh Lessons Learned networking is important what's the important is it important in the cloud absolutely what I have seen over the last three or four years is customers jump putting workers on the cloud primarily driven or mostly driven by the virtualization teams yep right taking hey I have a worker if you have a VM just taking lift and shift yes uh what happened then uh people have more and more works in the cloud and all of a sudden it's like wow I need to have high availability I need to have different zones I need to be able to get traffic from one zone or the other guess what that's the routing problem and what we're seeing uh was was most of my larger customers on the Enterprise side routing and switching is not going to go away routing in particular is not going to go away because it's a very important aspect of how do you connect Cloud instances between different providers as well as them back to your own uh estate so yeah actually routing is I think I want to say more important than ever quite frankly I mean it's interesting because I mean I YouTube a lot of people yeah writing you know networking is going away no absolutely not I think networking as part of a service but it's absolutely not going away I'm literally I see more interest in networking maybe not necessarily in the in the way we thought about never going to pass oh it's a router with an interface it's more now it's a Gateway or depending which cloud provider you're talking about but it's basically Gateway with an IP interface and I need to know what's my next top not going away at all actually quite frankly if you see at some of the problem sets that customer struggling with in the cloud as well as in our own data centers around having an ability to understand the network graph that topologies that spreads much wider than it used to be and so the first thing you're going to do is it's a logical Network right it's not the routing and switching hey I need to go on a CLI but it is I have an IP interface I have a sapner that I need to know where I go next with my hops I need to be able to build the graph and software I need to have digital twin capabilities that's all networking I mean so if you were talking to your younger self yeah a lot of people watching this may be younger yeah wanting to transition in they might not be like all boring networking guys like me what would you say to your younger self if you were starting to do or if you were like perhaps a bit older but you were trying to get into this like where do I start what should I look at what's important what are the mistakes like perhaps you can tell some stories like yeah give us give us sort of a road map if you can I mean one thing is don't don't feel like you need to chase the latest thing just speak to your point uh kubernetes or chat is the latest password to talk about the the funny thing is they're important things but there are some basic principles that will stay and you just apply and it makes your life easier if I look back right uh the one transition we clearly once you're in the networking world is we used to think about devices as the yes Foundation plug and there's the law but we moved on to uh fabrics and then distributed fabrics and topologies because in the end it's it's it's not about it's the device up or down which is important but it's really can I get uh kind of provide connectivity from A to B from you know between endpoints and so there's more of a system syncing how do you operate infrastructure and I think that if you if I give one advice is like think about that when you're trying to figure out what skills to pick up or where to focus and so with respect to never in particular as well as there's clearly I think a lot of this is going on for five ten years since you mentioned Hank yeah around automation right how do I how am I able to control infrastructures through automatic means to programming basically right and I'm not talking about c-plus programming yeah could be python could just be apis and then you you start some standard tooling right uh the trick is really not in my personal opinion not you need to not be an expert programmer pick some standard tooling yeah so you don't have to create your own and then apply it to a common problem which is an announcing is really how do I get great connectivity and monitoring that I have linked between endpoints right and so this is where automation fits in this is where python sdks might fit in where maybe you have ansible for automation maybe you are coming from the cloud mindset as a younger person and you start with a terraform approach but it's basically how do you automate infrastructure uh and then the next one this is a little damage is well this is pushing configuration but you want to actually have a model which is where some of the mathematics come is right when you talk about some of these networks you know no no surprises you know the neural network is like it's a network if you look at us the pictures very much like a network graph exactly and so some of the things that that are relevant they're absolutely apply to networking which is actually to me fascinating because when and I'm dating myself a little bit when when I did my degrees it was about newer networks and so here we are 25 years later and he was like wow it's the latest no it's actually it was there she's bringing this together how this applies to networking which is actually very much similar it's just exciting yeah and so I see my main message networking is very important because in the end it connects the famous word is the network is the computer yeah right these resources network is the cloud because it's literally what it is so it is the core but there are a lot of things you can apply around automation modeling that's in crucial because what you want as a user of an infrastructure you want to be able to predict outcome and modeling is very important observability is very important being able to connect the dots which is the network is very important so I actually think it's an exciting space if you're a networking person you're going to be the center no matter what you're going to do AI is it going to change everything uh like in the cloud is it like is it something that you should study is it something else you get into I it's a change the way I do my work my recommendation is study what you can do with AI technology don't over rotate everything is in the cloud because the way why CI is very important with respect to networking uh is you can use those mechanisms to predict better Behavior how networks will operate if you do apply a change to network you can do this before you actually apply changes like the digital twin concept yeah uh very very important can I use AI for prediction of network failure right let's see there's this idea around I have optic linear connects can I look at the performance characteristic and then do AI modeling in the back end based on some data sets and saying hey I can now predict this link may go down based on historic Trend within the next three days that's cool stuff so in that sense yes you should study that and think through how you can use the power of that to make networks more reliable if you in the network world as an operator so absolutely yes I think that's very important the other piece I think what's important is um there are certain application that will drive how Network should be built which is a completely different angle yeah because I'm right now we talked about animals how to use it as a tool to automate and monitor networks better but there's also another work angle on on AI which is around if I have to build big uh AI classes is the network the same that we used to build in the past is there different characteristics I need in the network and so that's quite frankly actually a very interesting topic to Think Through how to optimize my architecture what are some of the capabilities I need to build in to a network to optimize for ML workloads attached to that network security security is one upon peace the big problem eh security I don't think it's any new it's just what happens is as most people say the data center is distributed which means security becomes a distributed problem which means it's a little more complex so you need to actually build in security into what you do instead of what we used to in the past security sits on the border yeah because there's no more water it's just distributed so it has to be put in but security itself is nothing new it's just it needs to be part of the design by default so certification wise let's say I'm starting out yeah CCNA is still a good choice to start with CCNA is a good idea and then perhaps a definite associate absolutely you should do that and then perhaps AWS I think you should look at one or two of these clouds whether it's AWS whether it's Azure whether this is oci or Google it doesn't matter just like choose something to get the foundation sing one of those what's important to learn is how Cloud providers think about it right uh because there's a different way how do you send the bottom mindset if you're coming from the cloud side and I made that comment earlier I do more sync from the endpoint yeah I have a workload on endpoint and I need to connect end points together and the network is just the means that's the mindset so sometimes the terms people are using is there's a provider and a consumer and I need to find a relationship how to get from A to B if you're coming from now inside you typically think about I have segments and I put endpoints into segment by being a member of a segment I know they can talk so it's a it's a different way how to look at this problem so it's I think a very very helpful thing having the network architecture view to think about how do you segment infrastructure at the same time and that's why it doesn't really matter which Cloud you're going to start with because they're very much very similar how they think about the outside interview which is endpoints and how they need to communicate I was hearing in some of the the the the the Keynotes um this discussion about how Cisco are like in between like customers who have their stuff on premise yeah plus you're not like dedicated to one cloud provider because like old guy like me you know Cloud's gonna kill Cisco there's a lot of things that were predicted to kill us if we were saying the dead are living longer than you know yes no it's not going to happen uh without like networking cloud is just networking is going to go down a lot of people are predicting like you said it never happened hey I mean there's you know the whole cloud is a network as I said right the network is the cloud uh so that's not gonna change and I think the other piece what you're saying is how much do customers operate their own data centers versus moving the cloud I think that's quite frankly it's a there's going to be healthy balance because in the end it's a business problem right there's a cost to anything what a lot of people figured out is there is gravity to data it's not easy to move it around pure from an amount of data you need to move as well as from the cost of moving data and then some of the uh Regulatory Compliance restriction where you can put your data right and so because of that uh I think every customer I'm talking to is ending up in a hybrid World okay they will have some data sets in their own four walls or rented four walls but dedicated and then they will have some of their data set and application uh running in Cloud infrastructure where they're really going after service uh and I don't think that's the right or wrong because a lot of this is really it says in the end it's a business decision between what's my total cost of ownership how fast can I get a service rollout and application going uh and how do I scale up right and so you know I see I see some customers went all the way saying Hey I want to drive a change I lift and shift which allows me to redo going the other way at this point saying wow the cost is pretty high and so now I can maybe see hey the front end I might want to run in a cloud because I need the auto scale capability my back end I might not want to put it because it's too expensive because the data is just too expensive to be there and so I think a lot of times you see these Cycles but it's going to be a business decision over time what is the cost and then you're going to make adjustments you also you do the data centers piece as well how's things changing in the data centers like is it again like people are moving more and more to the cloud or any more Trends you're seeing in the data center data center what I've seen everybody has uh connectivity into the cloud yeah everybody keeps building out data sent us what I do see a lot of standardization around how do you build Fabrics in a data center very much focus on spine leaf designs scale-out designs they're very much focused in the last year and it will just get even more and more around what's not just the cost and the operational complexity of managed infrastructure also what is the power aspect of my infrastructure and how do I get to better manage my my uh footprint power footprint carbon footprint of infrastructure I think that's more and more driving decisions and then the other piece when I see in particular on the networking side I see more standardization around tooling how do you automate right it used to be I have a tool for Network I have a separate tool for uh server and storage more and more Focus around uh consistent tooling across and this is where some of the tools I mentioned earlier come in right instead of having bespoke tools for a certain technology more focus on abstraction and common tooling across because in the end you want a common service delivered and you don't want to go so the hassle of integrating different tools for different components that deliver that service so from a management like visibility point of view like you we're not talking about ansible or we're talking about like something that Cisco can help with visibility or a it both It's a combination of both right there's clearly uh a large interest in um uh open source capabilities yeah and and then being able to have this as a as a managed or maintained distribution by a provider vendor uh ansible is in a bucket but then also there's clearly what you need as a counterpart to this you need supported apis and playbooks uh to support that capability so it's it's going to be it's an interesting shift I see happening in that ecosystem uh whereas where there's more uh collaboration I think between uh uh different players to make that happen so CCNA devnet associate preps AWS basic cert and then go down what would you suggest after that pick a project uh what do you want to automate or where we want to provide visibility and you know it can start either way it depends on what a pain point is in a company what I see a lot for Masters first go after the visibility yeah trying to figure out where stuff where stuff is where's it broken where do you have hot spots and then derive the action from there but yeah I think that's that's the pass to go um and then yeah eventually come back to syncs to what the architecture requirement for the next set of applications going forward what do you see where do you see things going you've kind of spoken a bit about that but can you give us like a quick like overview where do you see things going this year and in the next few years um more Cloud uh more bandwidth more bandwidths that reminds me when I started off I remember it's like everything was 10 100 and it was the first one single we can't do gigabit and I was like who needs this yeah I asked three years ago actually the last three and a half years ago last last live session of Cisco life everybody interested in fortnite Gig and I looked people I had people looking I was like Thomas what are you smoking yeah every large uh RP I have for me the Enterprise service was funner cake is must at this point so it's it's a given customers deploying it or selling clearly uh we start talking about 800 gig I was gonna say you win 800 gig coming or uh we we started shipping the first capable infrastructure that I think I'm capable uh I see it phasing in in the in the core of infrastructure probably in the next 24 months absolutely it will come uh yeah so that that cycle of bandwidth is gonna continue uh what I think is slightly different is they're more focused on the power aspect than it used to be because band was everybody wants but you're going to run out of how many kilowatts you have in a wreck and how many kilowatts you have in the location and what the cost is of that power so I think there's way more focus on not just the bandwidth which I think will keep going but on what's the power envelope that I need to deliver that members but that is clearly going the other piece I mean are Lily I mean I don't think this is specifically new as Lily is the automation uh transition is going on to standardized automation uh it's clearly going on that you have to have an operational architecture approach to support hybrid as in your own managed infrastructure as well as Cloud properties and bring this together and then the other one I truly believe is a big is a big play in 23 and going forward is the digital twin capabilities uh to be able to model any change you do on your network so you know the outcome before you actually click the button okay and how would I do that is it let's just go to Tool we have a good set of tools we have a lot of Partners we're working with but yes I mean really what you want is to build a network graph and then overlay events that happen so on the in the area I'm working on we have a Nexus dashboard and then we're working on a cloud delivered service which is Nexus Cloud but yes there are the products that we sell and then the additions that you that you can have from from our partners as well do you think the um the days of having a whole bunch of physical infrastructures moving more to like putting everything virtualized like virtual routers virtual everything I mean that to me is it's a different layer of discussion there's more like where do you optimize yeah for why there was this discussion hey desegregation uh can I optimize the box from the software on top uh we see this and you know it's not a judgment it's just large Cloud providers will do this because there's really a benefit to optimize yeah Enterprise it's it's it's like instead of you buying a car because you need to drive it's like I buy a kit and I build the car yeah so there's there's a there's a cost of opportunity where do you invest right it's and if you're trying to figure out how to get faster from A to B you're rather looking like what's the infrastructure what's the road I need and what car do I need and not as like what's the best engine in the car yeah and so I think that one I I I don't see really for uh traditional Enterprise environments is really that's more of a discussion in the in a large cloud provider space I'm glad you said that because like there was this whole drive for white boxing or open Flow yeah and all of that but that's kind of like Diet except in the like you said in the cloud it's it is relevant but it's relevant infrastructure it's really not as a consumer of an I.T infrastructure Enterprise because that's not really the outcome you're shooting for right the outcome you're shooting for is Lily how do I connect from A to B and how do I segment securely and how do I have visibility it's it's not how do I get the last one percent of performance out of it so Thomas we're out of time sorry about that I want to keep you here for hours I really appreciate you sharing yeah thanks for you know giving especially people who knew a roadmap no thanks David I really enjoyed it so yeah brilliant love to talk again yeah definitely thanks yeah foreign [Music]

Channel: David Bombal Tech

Views: 67,344

Keywords: cisco, cloud, aws, azure, gcp, google, google cloud, cisco cloud, oracle cloud, hybrid cloud, cloud networking, cisco vs cloud, cisco jobs, cloud jobs

Id: OJVTEGFmlfU

Length: 21min 46sec (1306 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 28 2023