One Woman’s Mission to Bring DevOps to Networking
Susie Wee, Cisco’s VP and CTO of DevNet, has a clear message for network engineers: ‘You are a developer.’
Software is changing everything, even the networking world. Network engineers are reaching an inflection point. It’s clear now that software programming and DevOps will play a large role in an engineer’s work, and some have questions about how to get started.
Those unfamiliar with programming and software development are not alone, but the need for these skills is already at the top of the requirements list for hiring managers. Still, it’s not like a network engineer could slip on a Go T-shirt and call herself a developer.
So where does a network expert go to learn about coding in Python, learning API calls or Ansible or YAML or Git? What are the skills a network engineer really needs to know? How in-depth does that learning need to go? — These are all reasonable questions if you’re a network engineer looking ahead to the future.
Susie Wee, CTO and vice president of Cisco DevNet, set out in 2014 to provide some answers. More than that, she wanted to create a community of professionals in the same situation. The goal was to create a clear, non-judgmental pathway for engineers who are in need of some guidance.
Throwing a Party Without Invites
In 2014 Cisco began to show it was serious about bringing software and DevOps models into networking, which the company hoped would change the networking industry for good. The Network Assurance Engine, DNA Center, the Catalyst 9k switch, programmable ASICs, and a re-write of the IOS operating system were all already in various stages of design and creation.
Susie Wee recognized that software skills were only part of the software ecosystem. She wanted to see Cisco build a community for developers — one that would help network engineers dip their toes into the software development world with confidence. The result was DevNet, Cisco’s developer community.
“I spent more than a year evangelizing before getting approval and the resources to actually build it,” Wee said in an interview.
“Cisco was making an effort to be really serious about software. There was a lot of noise going about software on the network and everything that would happen there, and the industry wanted to know if Cisco would do anything with it.”
But despite the excitement and hype, Wee said, her opinion was that the transition to software-defined networking would not be material until large players like Cisco got involved.
According to Wee, it was important for Cisco to reflect on why the company wanted to get involved in software solutions. She believed that a developer community would be a vital component to have a successful software play.
‘…The real reason you want to have a software strategy is you want to partake in the ecosystem.’
“Of course, it’s great to have a recurring revenue model,” Wee said. “Yes, the margins associated with a software business are great. But the real reason you want to have a software strategy is you want to partake in the ecosystem. You want to have APIs into your platforms. You want your platforms to be integrated into workflows that are happening today. You want them to work with modern software and ISV software and partake in modern software solutions. And in order to do that, you need to expose your APIs. You need to help developers use those APIs, and allow them to build an entire world of new solutions that take advantage of those APIs.”
Wee said she pitched her idea for a developer community to fellow engineers and business leaders within Cisco. She took their feedback and iterated until she had the opportunity to pitch it to Cisco’s operating committee. The committee agreed with Wee’s assessment and told her that she should build it.
Easier said than done.
At the time, there were a handful of efforts within Cisco to engage developers, but no centralized approach. Building a centralized portal was the first step for Wee and her new developer community team.
The DevNet team wanted to make a big splash at a future Cisco Live! event — Cisco’s worldwide tech conference. Rather than wait a year, it was suggested they put together a DevNet Zone for Cisco Live! US, only a few months away.
It was such short notice that the DevNet Zone was not even listed on the program. Wee and her team weren’t sure anyone would even show up.
‘…We weren’t listed in the Cisco Live! program anywhere. But people still passed by and said, ‘Oh my gosh, Cisco’s teaching us how to code!’
“What we did is just plan it like a developer conference. We had a 24-hour hackathon. We had two tracks of theater sessions, which ranged from tracks like Coding 101 all the way to deep dives into the APIs that existed at the time. The thing was, we weren’t listed in the Cisco Live! program anywhere. But people still passed by and said, ‘Oh my gosh, Cisco’s teaching us how to code!’”
DevNet’s Thriving Community
Fast forward to today, and DevNet has more than 500,000 registered users, 60,000 of which are active monthly, representing 33,000 different companies.
Wee and her team started with the intent of teaching network engineers how to code, but found that their “killer app” was learning. Many within the networking community were hungry to learn as much as possible about software development and how to apply DevOps practices to their roles in deploying and maintaining networks.
Wee explained how she has seen attendees return to the Coding 101 workshop, asking more in-depth questions with each visit. Which, she says, is a validation of DevNet’s mission.
For some, learning development skills meant a new path to job security. For others, like Altus Consulting Co-Founder and CEO José Bogarin Solano, it meant an entirely new way forward to solving customers’ business needs.
Solano was one of those few hundred who attended the first DevNet Connect at Cisco Live! in 2014. His SMB consulting company, based in Costa Rica, was having a hard time competing with some larger Cisco technology consultants. So, he began to look at software development as a way to improve Altus’ offerings.
Solano said he and his partners were on the verge of bankruptcy when he left Costa Rica to attend Cisco Live! US in San Francisco. But his intuition about software development being the future for networking was confirmed when he arrived and walked through the DevNet Zone.
‘…We started to develop more software and have conversations with our customers about how to solve business problems using Cisco hardware but also with developing more software around it.’
“We went back home and doubled down on our strategy,” he said in an interview with theCube. “And we started to develop more software and have conversations with our customers about how to solve business problems using Cisco hardware but also with developing more software around it.”
The journey for Solano and Altus Consulting was an intimidating one to start. “It’s a complete shift in your company,” he said. “If you’ve been selling hardware and now selling software, it’s a completely different world. It has to be a whole different process. When you’re developing software, you have to have your team ready and develop probably three, four, five or maybe even six months in advance. It’s difficult. I know a lot of partners are trying to move that way, but it’s not that easy.”
Where to Start
Where to begin, especially from scratch, might be an intimidating question to answer. There are, of course, the traditional paths for learning programming or devops. Sites like Udemy and Coursera offer online courses, some for free. While some of these courses are structured around software development or even network engineers specifically, many are not.
Then there are paid resources like CodeCademy, PluralSight, and TreeHouse.
Wee says her team is focused on developing new ways to help engineers and business leaders get started with DevOps and software development, beyond simply learning to code. And the DevNet portal is the perfect place to start.
In addition to the available code samples, the code exchange, development labs in every technology segment (networking, data center, security, IoT, cloud, etc.), Wee and her team are looking to develop more incentives to encourage learning and experimentation. It’s all a way to get networkers and engineers to dip their toes in and start the journey.
Wee was adamant that DevNet isn’t just for those who already consider themselves to be developers. DevNet was created precisely to be the bridge between the expertise of network engineers and software developers.
Maybe you’re a network engineer and are not ready to jump into software or DevOps. Wee says a lot can happen through just a cultural change. Just becoming familiar with the cultural language of software development will open new channels of communication and collaboration between two groups that are often operating in different worlds.
“Our message is: you are a developer. You need to become a developer,” she said. “A developer can be a coder, pounding out thousands of lines of code a day. But we don’t expect networkers to become coders. We do expect our networkers to become power users of software because your network is now a big software system, the intent-based network. They should be able to use the newest technologies, especially in this next chapter of the programmable network.”
To learn more about DevNet, visit the DevNet portal here.
Have a question? Join DevNet’s open Webex Teams chat rooms that have developer advocates on standby to help.
