Making a trip to Berlin is always worthwhile. And February is especially notable, as this is when famous movie stars make their way down the red carpet for the international film festival Berlinale. For me, the special draw is Cisco Live Berlin and the opportunity to speak German. A week from now, Cisco Live Berlin will be ready to rock. From a Cisco Data center standpoint ACI, Inter-Cloud, IOT and UCS continue to grab the headlines. In particular, Cisco ACI has established itself as the dominant SDN technology with thousands of customers and a growing eco-system of partners in just one and a half years. In this blog, I am going to present excerpts of what attendees can broadly expect to see and experience at the buzzing event, and I will take you on a tour of how ACI is ready to engage and enrich you.

Keynotes

At the outset, I'd recommend that you attend all keynotes to understand Cisco's strategy for emerging technology trends and market transitions. Cisco Execs Jeremy Bevan and Zorowar Biri Singh kick-start the proceedings with an opening keynote on Feb 16 as they discuss empowering customers and employees as companies embark on building a Digital Business in the new era of IT. Don't miss several technology innovation talks occurring throughout the week.. Cisco Exec Soni Jiandani's session on SDN/ACI topic is going to be a sell-out. Come and listen to Soni to understand how ACI enables business outcomes like Digital Transformation as well as how Cisco's innovations, from Applications to ASICs, bring unique capabilities and value to the industry.

Now I want to segue to ACI specifics. The last year has been phenomenal from an ACI eco-system momentum standpoint. F5 and Citrix, leading ADC vendors, have developed joint solutions with ACI and we have experienced several customer wins and success stories.

ACI Solution Partners

F5 is a platinum sponsor and has a big presence at Cisco Live Berlin this year to delight the attendees. Visit F5 at stand P2 to meet with subject matter experts and watch live demos of F5 and Cisco solutions that enable rapid, secure, and reliable L2-7 services across physical, virtual, and cloud platforms. Attend F5's technical breakout session BRKSP-2003 for a Technical Deep Dive on F5 BIG-IQ, BIG-IP and Cisco ACI for Applications Deployment. Do not miss F5's DevNet Zone workshop to learn how to deploy applications configurations with F5 BIG-IP and Cisco Nexus 9000 infrastructure with Puppet. Get a head-start by watching the live panel session video we recorded last month.

Citrix is a platinum sponsor at Cisco Live Berlin.. This year , Citrix has a signifcant presence in the partner area. Key activities at the booth include joint solution demos featuring UCS-XD/XA with ACI, ACI-NetScaler, ACI POC on Github, Cisco APIC-EM among other major ones. Furthermore, David Potter and Raj Gulani from Citrix are doing a breakout (BRKSP-2006) on the topic, "Citrix and Cisco Alliance -Delivering the best load balancing, virtual desktops and application delivery with Cisco ACI".  For your benefit, we also have a detailed white-board video illustrating various ACI and Citrix NetScaler deployment scenarios. There are many other exciting activities to offer, which you can check out at the Citrix Booth P3.

Demos and Theater Presentations at WOS

At the World of Solutions (WOS) this year, SDN/ACI, UCS and Cloud take center stage in the Data Center category. There are multiple demos showcasing ACI innovations. I want to draw your attention to key ones like security and micro-segmentation, Multi-Hypervisor support, and ACI integration with Cloud Management Platforms.  We also have a "Meet the Engineer" program, which gives you the opportunity to engage with a Cisco engineer in a 1:1 conversation focused on your unique questions and challenges.  Click here to setup a 1:1 session. Finally, you have access to our subject matter experts staffing the booth demos. They will give you a real-life demo and explain how these are relevant to your needs.

So stop by the WOS to explore new technologies and get answers to your unique questions.

In addition to the hands-on demos, we also have round the clock mini-presentations at the WOS Cisco Education Zone mini-theater. This year we have several exciting ACI theater topics namely "Secure and Accelerate your Applications with policy-based L4-L7 services", "Network Analytics - Key Use Cases for Applications, Automation, and Operations", "Open NXOS / Programmability Solutions", plus many more. If you are hard pressed for time, these sessions are ideal given their short duration nature.   They will give you a quick overview on innovative features and architectures of Cisco ACI. Check our WOS Theater roster in the agenda handout.

Breakout Sessions

To your heart's delight is how I'll describe Cisco technical breakout sessions. Yes, we have more than 300 breakouts from industry recognized experts at the show. ACI breakouts feature prominently, and the legends of the ACI domain including Carlos Pereira, Ranga Rao, Lilian, Maurizio, Thomas Scheibe all are presenting stimulating sessions.. Search the session catalog to pick your choice sessions. I recommend Carlos's breakout BRKVIR-2931 which takes you on an end-end journey of ACI. Also TECDCT-2002, a day-long technical session by ACI big guns Thomas, Azeem et al will give you an end-end view of the evolving Data Center fabric. Marketing Director, Craig Huitema is doing a session PSOSDN-2002 that focuses on how to speed up business by simplifying Data centers with ACI and Nexus. ACI thought leader Harry Petty  is doing a Panel session PNLACI-2201 same day with fellow Cisco experts and Customer Thomas Raabo on how to build Data Centers with ACI.  You are in for a double treat on Feb 17.

Social Networking

As a Cisco Live attendee, you benefit from the opportunity to interact with your peers, Cisco staff and partner technical experts in both structured and informal settings. Our Welcome Reception and Customer Appreciation Event are the highlights of the week's social calendar. Read more on the Social Events & Networking Onsite section. Our social media online communities provide year round access to like-minded individuals as well as valuable content, news and updates. We'd love it if you would join the conversation.

I can go on and on, but I'd never be able to cover all of the excitement in store. There is so much more you can explore on your own, and our Meet and Greet ambassadors will be happy to assist you at the show. As for me, if time permits, I plan on acquainting myself with some of the legendary artworks in Berlin's 100 plus Museums. Safe travels and a happy Cisco Live.

Related Links

www.cisco.com/go/aci

www.blogs.cisco.com/datacenter

ACI-F5

ACI-Citrix

http://www.ciscolive.com/emea/