Cisco, the developer company, right?
You know Cisco, that networking company that makes hardware for deep internal systems and spends all its time developing switches, routers, hubs and token ring adapters and suchlike, right?
No, that was Cisco, that was the 1990s… this is Cisco in the post-millennial software-defined universe.
This is a Cisco that would rather be known as a software company (altogether now… software runs the world and every company is a software company tra la la) with a focus on software application developers and all strains of programming professionals.
There’s been a lot of focus on rearchitecting at Cisco… and much of it has been focused on rearchitecting towards the new mantra for technologies such as cloud-age Network Function Virtualision (NFV) and software-defined networking… and that’s rearchitecting internally as well as rearchitecting Cisco’s core customer base.
So where’s the meat here then?
The firm used its Cisco Live Europe show this January 2019 to roll out a specific set of programmer tools aligned to the Internet of Things (IoT) space.
DevNet
Cisco’s developer program, which is DevNet (developer stuff for networks – get it?), features a new set of IoT developer tools to help build and manage applications at the edge and enable the extra flexibility.
The new IoT Developer Center is presented with learning materials, developer tools and support resources.
“In IoT, the conversation is about business outcomes. It starts with secure connectivity as the foundation of every IoT deployment. By providing scale, flexibility and security, we’re turning the network into a secret weapon for our IoT customers,” said Liz Centoni, senior vice president and general manager, IoT at Cisco. “And, with a new DevNet IoT developer center, we’re empowering thousands of partners and developers around the world to build upon our IoT platform.”
Technologies showcased here include IOx for edge compute development.
In the data and network management space, but also specifically presented for developers, Cisco here showcases Cisco Kinetic, Cisco Kinetic for Cities, Control Center and Blockchain.
A dedicated open source subsection of the site features tools including Joy, NeXt UI Toolkit, TRex, YANG Development Kit (YDK) and YANG Explorer.
DevNet Sandboxes provide zero-cost, access to infrastructure and platforms to develop and run code against 24×7… and DevNet Ecosystem Exchange makes it easier for developers to both find and share applications and solutions built for Cisco platforms.
Clearly, in reality, we know that Cisco has been a software-focused developer-centric company for years and the firm has always had a pedigree in programmer functions of many disciplines — what we now see if Cisco working to try and present a greater degree of developer accessibility to its toolsets for people who code across a far greater transept.
