Authored by Jared Headley, Senior Director of Cloud Platforms and Services 

Twenty-five years ago, the pain in my wrists was unbearable.  I was spending 10-12 hours a day creating presentations about the OSI model and the power of a multiprotocol network (yeah, I'm old).  After visiting a doctor and physical therapist I was told the secret to preventing the pain was to learn how to juggle.  Really? Juggling would solve my problems?

Fast forward 25 years later and here we are at a painful inflection point in the industry and I hear the same question constantly: how can I juggle all of this?  We have three complex balls flying around and many are starting to wonder -can we make this all work right and work together?

The three balls?Multicloud, SD-WAN, andAutomation.A recent headline in Forbes titled "Cloud Computing, Once Loved For Its Simplicity, Is Now A Complex Beast" points to the struggle many are having with a complex multicloud world.  Additionally, as customers are searching for multicloud answers, they are also dealing with the largest transformation of the WAN years: SD-WAN.  A recent TechTarget article points to the intersection of multicloud and SD-WAN requirements "SD-WAN connectivity requirements for a multi-cloud world".  Finally, as the complexity grows, the need for automation -true model-driven automation of network resources and IT functions -is necessary to meet the agility and quality requirements of a digital economy.

So how do we successfully juggle these three balls?

First, tame the Multicloud world.  Recently we announced availability of our Cisco Hybrid Cloud Platform for Google Cloud.  This solution bridges the silos that divide IT operations and software developers by allowing customers to drive business innovation and get the most from their existing legacy application investments and cloud-native tools.

Second, unleash SD-WAN.  IT teams are turning to SD-WAN for a more flexible and easier to manage WAN architecture that can address the dynamic demands of the cloud. At the same time, IT is taking the opportunity to use internet connectivity to lower WAN costs and optimize the user experience.

Third, automate the network. Recently I received an email where a major Tier 1 service provider outlined some of the dramatic results of their latest phase of automation using Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO).  The rollout transformed configurations that used to take days (sometimes even weeks) down to minutes.  The automation system handles hundreds of thousands of requests a day and supports over 1,000 different service configurations.

Let Cisco help you learn how to juggle through this inflection point.  You can meet the team at the SDN NFV World Congress October 9-11 in The Hague Netherlands to learn more about Cisco's solutions for automating the network for SD-WAN and multicloud.

By the way, the pain from 25 years ago? In a matter of a few weeks I learned how to juggle and fortunately I can say that pain has never returned.