>> Announcer: Live from San Diego, California, it's theCUBE,
covering Cisco Live US 2019.
Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners.
>> Welcome back to San Diego, everybody.
This is Dave Vellante and Stu Miniman.
You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage.
Lisa Martin is also here.
Stu, I actually did see Ron Burgundy
in the street last night.
He was out, he was shaking hands with all the CCIEs.
This is day three of Cisco Live 2019, theCUBE's coverage.
Joe Malenfant is here, the director
of IOT marketing at Cisco.
Joe, great to see you in from Colorado Springs.
>> Thank you very much.
>> First time at theCUBE, welcome.
>> It is my first time in theCUBE,
thankfully it's not actually just a box,
because I have a little claustrophobia going on.
>> (laughs) So, IOT, it's got all the momentum.
Alisa Tony was up on stage this week,
addressing 28,000 press people.
What's driving all this momentum, other than
the great marketing, what's really happening in the field?
>> IOT has been a very nebulous thing for the last few years,
and we're finally started to see some solidification
and some convergence around what it means.
And really for Cisco, we started on this path
a few years ago, but Liz took over last year.
We've established a new strategy, because customers,
organizations and especially organizations
that run operational technology,
think of refineries in the oil and gas industry,
in the electric utilities industry.
They run a whole separate network called
industrial control systems, and that OT side
of the house has traditionally been very siloed.
Well, as the economy moves forward,
as we digitize, they're trying to connect back
with their enterprise side of the house.
Well, if you're going to connect your network with the IT side,
why not use the incumbent leader in enterprise networking?
We know who they are.
We're all sitting here right now with Cisco.
So they look back to the IT side to say,
hey, please help us connect.
That's really what's driving the market today.
>> So how should we think about the difference
between OT networks and IT networks?
Are there any things we can learn from Tellco
which also had some unique inner attributes to it?
But share with us what you guys have learned there.
>> So the OT network is very different, right?
It's very time sensitive; latency is just
something that they can't have.
When you think of email going down,
what's the worst that happens?
You might get a nasty gram eventually.
Well, when the power grid falls over, lives are at stake.
So, those networks are very critical, they're very sensitive
and they've always been kept separate.
As they start to make that interconnection,
we need to bring together networking technologies
that are for that environment.
As they make that connection though,
there is a very number one concern for them is
wait a second, if we're going to connect this stuff,
we need to make sure it's secure.
If you're a chemical processor for example,
and you've got a secret recipe, you don't publish that.
You don't patent it, because you don't want
the word to get out or else somebody's going to rip you off.
So, they don't want to have this
side of the house get connected with that
side of the house and expose the secret sauce.
So security becomes very top of mind for them.
Connected but do it securely.
>> All right, so, Joe, I've actually been happy with
how I've seen the solutions (mumbles) from Cisco,
because when I first heard IOT, it was like,
well we're the leader in networking.
We're going to network everything, and I'm like, okay.
But at the device edge, one of the challenges is,
often I have limited or no connectivity.
So sometimes, I'm going to need to do the processing there.
There's lots of different protocol issues that I have there.
So talk about some of those new solutions that
Cisco's been doing at the edge that are more than
just sending bits back and forth.
>> That's a great question, Stu.
So, of course, everything has to do with networking, right?
But networking is merely the vehicle for connectivity,
and so we realized very quickly if we're going to create
new routers and switches for this environment,
there's an opportunity to do a little bit more.
So back in February, we did something
at DevNet Create called the Hackathon.
We have a new router.
It's a ruggedized router called the IR1101.
I think Liz showed it on stage the other day,
and this has a specific module inside of it.
So there's a module that can be swapped out.
Well, at the DevNet Create Hackathon,
one of the teams actually created a machine learning module.
Why machine learning at the edge, right?
If you have 700 sub stations, you don't want to deploy
machine learning on each and every one of them.
You want to get all that data back into a central place
so you have more data to actually train your algorithms on.
Why would you put ML at the edge?
Because not everything needs to come back.
There's stuff that you can do at the edge,
number one, with that machine learning
on traffic that doesn't have to go back.
When you don't back all traffic,
that means you don't have to pay costs over
to your LTE carrier for more data.
Other times, as well, though, you're looking
at compliance as another reason.
So, that's one use case, right?
Let's look at the other one, which really comes down to,
okay, if I'm connecting things, and you can actually do
some computing at the edge, how are we going to do it?
On all of our new switches and routers
that have edge compute capability, they're using
native docker containers, so now you can
actually deploy your applications at the edge.
Again, do the work at the edge as close to
where it has to be as possible.
Don't bring it back, you don't have to worry
about any sort of violation of compliance
with local laws, sovereignty clouds.
You don't have to worry about costs of back hauling traffic.
And then, if anything's time sensitive,
it stays as close to the edge as possible.
>> So one of the keys here to your strategy is clear,
is to allow developers to build
new applications at the edge.
You're not OT experts; that's not your roots.
And those developers, your ultimate clients, are.
They're the domain experts, they know what's going on,
they know these specialized areas,
so talk about the importance of having
programmable infrastructure at the edge,
and specifically what your strategy is.
Where does Cisco leave off?
And you're not a pass vendor.
You're going to bring that in through partnerships,
but help us understand that strategy a little bit better.
>> Our ecosystem is incredibly important to us.
So we've got, DevNet is incredibly important to Cisco,
because as you heard probably yesterday,
Susie announced new certifications for IOT.
Those certifications allow engineers,
whether it's a control systems engineer,
whether it's a network engineer, to actually get certified,
be it specialist, be it professional,
in writing their applications for the edge,
for those specific environments.
But more importantly, because, let's go back
to the environment that we're working in,
time sensitive, very critical, low latency networks.
You don't want to go and push out something
where you're not 100% certain, so IOT certifications
that DevNet has created give those engineers a repository,
a sandbox and all of the Cisco solutions to actually test
with before they do the deployment and ensure, almost
guarantee themselves success by pushing the production.
>> And one of the key things theirs do is
the ability to test things quickly and fail fast.
>> Yeah, well one of the things that I was
a little bit concerned about when I saw this wave
of IOT is every customer's going to have
different requirements, so it feels like
we at least get some level of maturity
and commonality if we can have certification.
>> Joe: Exactly.
>> What does somebody come out of?
What skill set do they have in rank?
Because you said from a manufacturing or healthcare,
everybody's going to use IOT, but how we use it
and where we use it is going to be very different.
What's the base layer that we're learning about?
>> So, ultimately, the engineer who's actually coding
these things, kind of what you said.
They're all going to be very vertical specific use cases.
There's not a lot of horizontal stuff going on,
so we're creating a baseline for the engineer
to understand their environments better.
They honestly know it better than we do,
but we want to make sure that as they go to deploy
these things that we give them
the infrastructure to do it on, the application
and framework within which to do it,
and the tools to be able to do it.
And so that's the docker, the modules, being able to do
edge compute and then lastly having that certification
within IOT to how do I code this thing?
Can I guarantee that I'm going to be
successful and push it out?
>> Joe, what's the organizational dynamic like?
You always hear the store's OT is not talking to IT.
They're different animals.
You've got some hardcore engineers that have hardened
their infrastructure, and you got IT guys
that are trying to build applications
and support applications for the business.
Those two constituencies don't talk.
What can Cisco do?
What's the strategy with regard to
bringing those constituents together?
Do you have to or is it sort of divide and conquer?
>> I think the number one thing that we want to do is
enable the collaboration between the IT and OT.
It's not that people don't want to.
They're just trying to figure out how to do it better.
So if we can help them number one, connect their networks
together, safely and securely, that's number one.
Reliable and secure networking, what we're known for.
But number two, from the OT side,
back to what I said originally was around the security side.
So, I don't know if you guys heard, we announced last week
our intent to acquire a company called Sentryo.
Now, why is this important?
Because they do passive network detection, whether
it's anomaly detection, but they do asset discovery as well.
Now a big thing when you're connecting those OT networks
into the IT world is what assets do I even have?
Those assets are vastly different from anything IT
actually knows so this acquisition will allow us to
passively discover and tell them, here's your list
of assets that you're going to be connecting.
Here's what we need to secure, so they know in scope
as they walk into this project,
they've got a really good blueprint
for what needs to be done and not surprises.
And the reason that's important is about only 40% of all
IOT projects make it from pilot to production.
I mean that's kind of staggeringly low.
I actually had an analyst tell me yesterday, I'm shocked
you guys said 40%, because I only hear about 30%.
>> Yeah, yeah, right.
>> And when you're doing it in a lab,
you know all the variables, but when you go out to
a brown field environment, where you've got
20 year old systems that honestly was probably
a system hidden underneath some guy's desk
that nobody's actually known about.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
We're actually able to discover all those assets now.
That's why we did the acquisitions, so it's really from
an asset visibility and a security standpoint.
>> And you're saying, Joe, that that discovery is
specific to edge assets versus like a stealth watch.
We heard a lot about stealth watch this week,
which is they do discovery, but you say
that's predominantly IT assets, servers, storage,
networking, you know, switches, et cetera, routers.
>> I mean, listen, so stealth watch is awesome,
and I think eventually there's going to be
a little bit of a merger between some of these things.
But, the operational technology
environment is very different.
They're not native IP.
They don't talk the same protocols.
There's thousands of different protocols
that exist in an operational technology environment,
DMP3, Modbus, Profinet, Profibus.
Just very few right there. (laughs)
Those IT has never, ever talked them.
They don't even know what they mean for the most part.
Tell an IT guy, hey can you detect this DMP3 traffic?
The answer's no.
However, when we move into that environment,
our networks need to be able to understand that traffic,
and that's where Sentryo comes in with
that operational technology expertise to help
the IT and the OT really come together.
Business all comes at the end of the day.
>> So, Joe, give us a little spin
around the show from an IOT standpoint.
We've got the IOT takeover happening
here in the DevNet zone.
All the classroom seem packed jammed,
as they've been all week for all the takeovers,
but give us a little spin around.
>> It's been amazing actually so far, this year.
Having been at Cisco for a few years now,
I walked into this and said, wow,
we are definitely in the IOT world.
We've got IOT plastered outside; we've got it inside.
People are very interested in IOT.
They're interested not just in what we're doing,
but how they can take the knowledge
and what they're going to learn here and really bring it
back into a practical use case at their own organizations.
So, from an IOT perspective,
the world of solutions downstairs is jam packed.
I mean, we've got a massive presence down there.
We've connected the buses that are outside.
If you look at the app, we've actually connected
those buses to the app for real time data to say
this is when the next bus is actually coming.
I mean, what a pain in the butt is it to stand outside
and go, where's the shuttle bus?
We can tell you where the shuttle bus is.
We can tell you when it's coming
and how long you're going to have to wait.
And yes, don't worry, you've got time to get another coffee.
>> Just follow the line you'll find the bus. (laughs)
>> You'll find the bus but how long is
it going to take to get you there?
>> (laughs) Okay, you were mentioning about
some of the reasons for apps at the edge.
I want to come back and explore that a little bit.
You said compliance, I think you threw in cost.
There's physics involved, as well.
So the cloud guys would say, hey yeah, we know there's
a lot of stuff going at the edge,
but ultimately the heavy work is going to be done
in the cloud and all the modeling.
You've got others who are saying, hey, here's the blocks,
going to put it at the edge instead of a top down approach.
What's your scenario in terms of data at the edge?
Why does data need to stay at the edge?
You mentioned real time before,
but let's double click on that a little bit.
>> So I think there's really three key reasons that data
and applications are going to be processed at the edge.
Number one, compliance, right?
So there's certain data that's going to come in
that cannot be shipped back to a public cloud.
That's part of the rules; you cannot do it.
No public cloud for certain private data.
Number two is cost, honestly, and this is a really big one.
If you can reduce your overall cost, instead of back hauling
all that traffic to HQ, to your data center,
and you just keep it at the edge,
you don't have to back haul it.
LTE traffic, not the cheapest, and I can only imagine
with 5G how much that's going to increase the cost.
They're going to want to just back haul everything, right?
Well, we can do that really quickly.
We can take everything and put it back.
Yes, but your bill every month is going to be
monumentally more expensive.
And then, lastly, as you mentioned was
the time sensitive one.
That's really going to be one of the bigger ones
from a business standpoint.
The engineers are now going to be able to write applications
for processing data at the edge, so that they don't lose.
In this environment, three seconds is
the difference between life and death.
I'm kind of exaggerating but kind of not.
If you're missing an alert in a couple seconds
where you can't shut down a gas-leak valve
where there's potential for explosion,
those seconds are the difference between boom,
or we're all good guys, it was just an alert.
>> Another classic example here is
autonomous vehicles, as well.
You can't run that from the cloud, right?
You've got to do that locally.
Last question, Joe, is Cisco differentiation.
Obviously you come at it from a position
of networking strength, you mentioned that
in your opening comments but give us
the bumper sticker on why Cisco.
>> I think that the big reason why Cisco is unique
in the IOT world is, number one,
we're not trying to be everything to everybody.
We're trying to create a safe and secure, reliable network.
Number two, though, is our ecosystem.
So we have a large partner ecosystem.
We're expanding it into the OT world.
We've got specific products for those OT partners
where they can imbed our networking technology into
their solutions and systems that they're putting together.
(clears throat) Lastly is, honestly,
what we're doing here with DevNet.
Nobody in this world other than Cisco has DevNet
with the network, with the ecosystem.
When you put that trifecta together, it's unstoppable.
And so being able to bring together IT and OT,
only we can do that with those three things.
>> So I think Susie said yesterday, Stu, 600,000 engineers
that are trained on coding Cisco infrastructure.
It's going to be interesting to see how the OT folks pick up
on that, and what the adoption is there.
Joe Malenfant, thanks so much for coming
on theCUBE, it was great to have you.
>> Thank you, gentlemen, I appreciate it.
>> Really, a pleasure.
Okay, Stu and I will be right back.
Lisa Martin is also in the house.
You're watching theCUBE.
We're live from Cisco Live in San Diego.
We'll be right back.
(upbeat techno music)