Cisco DevNet Helps You Architect for Agility with Infrastructure as Code and SASE

In the past year, every single industry was turned upside-down. We had to completely transform how we work, how we engage and help our customers, and how we do business. I was so proud to see you, our Cisco customers and partners, rise to the occasion.

A year ago, we were all reacting. Now, I see you taking on a new tone. A new tone of learning, architecting, and even innovating. We still have unknowns – will we work from the office or from home? Will students be on campus or at home – or will they start on campus and part way through the year be sent back home? But we also have many knowns. We have proven that we can run our businesses while working from home. That we can teach students on campus or remotely, and switch if needed. That we can adjust our business models quickly.

We have proven to ourselves that we can be agile – agile in our business and agile with technology – using our applications and infrastructure to best serve our customers. And we know we must continue to architect for agility: to run and grow our businesses and serve our customers in these dynamic times.

There are two major technology evolutions that allow us to architect for agility and accelerate our business success: First, the evolution of automation – to embrace Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and DevOps practices for hybrid cloud and multicloud environments. The second is the advancements in how applications meet infrastructure. Modern applications can leverage an API-based infrastructure with built-in security capabilities and full stack observability, using a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture designed for today’s reality, in which users must be able to securely access applications and data from a variety of devices and locations.

New Cisco DevNet Developer Centers help you architect for agility

Cisco DevNet is all about helping you architect for agility. We are here to enable you to fully leverage these technology advances. To help your teams transform and your businesses become more agile with these new digital technologies, we’re announcing today the launch of three new Cisco DevNet Developer Centers:

The evolution of automation

Automation is the cornerstone of digitally transforming your infrastructure. With the new technologies available today, automation takes on a whole new meaning.

Automation is much more than simply reducing repetitive tasks, eliminating human errors, and scaling manual operations. Automation is about treating your Infrastructure as Code (IaC). It’s about using software practices in your infrastructure operations. And, it’s about DevOps, which allows software development teams and IT teams to work together. It’s about having cloud applications work well across public cloud and private cloud environments.

Viewing your Infrastructure as Code completely changes the paradigm of automation. You can start by treating configuration as code where you compare all your configuration files with a golden template to ensure you maintain consistency and compliance across your infrastructure. You can evolve to implement continuous design-build-deploy-destroy-rollback methodologies in your live operational environment. And, you can connect to APIs in your infrastructure to allow it to be used as a programmable building block and integrate with your workflows and applications. Infrastructure as Code gives you a level of agility you never had before.

Automation is also about DevOps, which allows software development teams and IT operations teams to work together, using software lifecycle practices to create, maintain, and destroy software, and Infrastructure as Code practices to create, maintain, and destroy infrastructure accordingly.

Automation today allows you to work in multicloud and hybrid cloud environments. Automation can help provide a consistent application experience across public and private cloud environments using orchestration tools like Terraform. Automation also provides security as cloud applications and microservices access data, users, and devices across different clouds.

Take a look at this demo that shows how higher education can architect for agility with automation and Infrastructure as Code using Cisco Intersight and HashiCorp Terraform.

Our new Cisco DevNet Infrastructure as Code Developer Center includes access to sample code and Learning Labs that help you enable Infrastructure as Code across the entire network fabric, from Intersight to Cisco DNA Center, SD-WAN and more. It includes sample code to help you deploy an Intersight Kubernetes Service cluster, access to the Cisco Intersight Terraform provider, Learning Labs to help you start automating Cisco MSO with Terraform, and more. It also includes the DevNet Sandbox to let you get hands-on with all the new Intersight APIs and to help you get started with key integrations.

The advancements in how applications meet infrastructure

Traditionally, applications and infrastructure were separate – app developers wrote apps using the bandwidth they could get, and IT operations provided the best network connectivity they could. Cloud applications, containers and microservices, public and private cloud, and a more capable, programmable infrastructure changed all that. With these advancements, businesses, application developers, and IT teams can benefit from full stack observability that spans infrastructure, applications, users, and devices and reaches across geographies, including cloud, edge, and data centers. The intelligence extracted from full stack observability can be used to improve business, security, and application performance.

Today, converged network and security services can be provided from the cloud, using technologies like SD-WAN, DNS security, and observability. These technologies, in combination, are often termed SASE (Secure Access Service Edge), and the growing influence of this model reflects the changing patterns in how users now access applications, data, and devices from on-premise to edge to cloud.

Our new Cisco DevNet SASE Developer Center features developer resources that help you create SASE solutions with SD-WAN, Meraki, Umbrella, Secure Access by Duo, AnyConnect, Thousand Eyes and more. This developer center features automation use cases for integrating Cisco Secure Access by Duo with SecureX, Code Exchange examples for ASA VPN monitoring with ThousandEyes, Learning Labs, and access to the DevNet Sandbox to get started with Cisco’s SASE technologies.

Security services, such as threat intelligence and threat response, are now being built into the infrastructure. Application and security policies can be defined, and the infrastructure can implement these policies with the programmable infrastructure. This allows multiple security tools to be integrated into DevSecOps workflows to monitor, detect, and respond to threats. With SecureX, we’re building threat intelligence and threat response into the infrastructure, and we’re integrating security ecosystem providers and other third-party security tools into the SecureX environment.

Our updated Cisco DevNet SecureX Developer Center features a new SecureX orchestration lab, a Learning Lab for incorporating 3rd party security tools into your threat response, and new sample code using Cisco SecureX threat response and threat orchestration workflows so you can ensure your systems stay secure. These new tools join our existing Learning Labs for incorporating 3rd party security tools into your threat response, and more.

The DevNet community and ecosystem

DevNet accelerates your journey with software, automation, DevOps, and cloud applications and infrastructure by giving you developer resources to get hands-on with Cisco technology. DevNet also cultivates a community who can learn, grow, and solve problems together.

I’m happy to share that our DevNet community has made significant progress to build the capabilities to deliver agility. Just over one year ago, we launched the new Cisco DevNet Certifications focused on the software skills and API knowledge that your team needs to be successful with the evolution of automation and the advancement of applications meeting infrastructure. We’re happy to share that a total of 8,015 DevNet community members made the DevNet Class of 2020 by earning 10,500 DevNet certifications in the first year they were available. Thirteen Cisco partners have achieved the DevNet Specialization, validating that they have the talent, software practices, and customer successes to help businesses architect for agility.

Transform for business agility

You’ve transformed your business over the last year, and I’m amazed at all you’ve done to keep your businesses agile. DevNet is here with you as you continue to look for ways to build adaptability into your business. Be sure to visit developer.cisco.com/ciscolive to learn more about how you can use the full power of DevNet to keep your business agile, today and for the future.

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