In a few weeks Spring season will set in, and it'll be a Ripper Down Under. For the Data Center technology geeks there is plenty of action in store to celebrate the onset of Aussie spring. I am talking about F5 Agility that is getting ready to rock Melbourne (Aug 18) and Sydney (Aug 20)

Just last week, I was at F5 Agility, Washington DC. It was an electrifying experience meeting customers and partners of Cisco and F5 and culminating in a powerful guest keynote by Colin Powell, the legendary American statesman and retired four-star general. Colin's passion to help youth and transform the globe is totally extra-ordinary and most of us attendees were privileged to listen to him that day. That speech has super charged me to last for a long time, and in that mindset, let me switch context to F5 Agility, Melbourne Aug 18, and Sydney Aug 20. The agenda for both these events are identical. We have a packed set of activities from early morning till late evening. We are going tohear F5's leaders, customers, and partners share how the latest solutions from F5 are transforming what's possible for today's organizations. In about a year's time CiscoACIand F5 partnership has demonstrated significant success in our joint solution momentum and customer adoption. I am pleased to invite you all to attend this premier industry event and get insights on howF5 and Cisco are bringing the power of cloud, data centers, converged systems, and as-a-Service together to enable fast, efficient, and secure application delivery in today's challenging hybrid environments.

The keynote by Julian Eames, F5 EVP of Business Operations, centers on "Innovate, Expand and Deliver" and lays the foundation for your business toinnovatenew paths to success,expandthrough barriers to growth, anddeliverthe applications your customers need to succeed. Julian will take you a tour of current market trends, how F5 has grown under John McAdam's tenure, the evolution of the F5 Platform from simple load balancer to ADC to support Cloud based business models, the growing importance of enterprise security, recent F5 acquisitions, and last but not the least the growing eco-system of Partners. I recommend getting started with Julian's keynote.

Following the keynote, Cisco Exec Shashi Kiran is hosting the Plenary, Platinum Sponsor session titled "Deliver Application Agility with Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI)", 10.30 am local time. What's unique about this Breakout Session? You will get the opportunity to hear Shashi eloquently walk you through the role of Cisco ACI in today's Application-Oriented Economy, also see a key partner join him on stage and share their success stories with ACI. Shashi will discuss how emerging applications are placing huge demands on Data Center Infrastructure and how grossly unprepared they are to meet the same. Shashi will then introduce Cisco ACI, an open, scalable, programmable SDN solution that helps address these infrastructure challenges. Shashi will illustrate how Cisco's open architecture enables seamless integration of F5 into ACI's policy framework and how the joint solution brings unprecedented agility and end-end L2-L7 accelerated application delivery.

Shashi is also doing the Plenary Panel Session in the evening jointly with F5 Execs and the Guest Customer speaker. The topic centers around global trends and themes around Cloud adoption and drivers, SDN, Security etc. This session will be invigorating and sets the stage for a lively evening solutions expo tour.

For the technically oriented among you, we also have a number of technical breakout sessions hosted by F5 and its Partners. These sessions cover Security, Cloud in detail along-with other emerging Data center topics.

That is not all. Cisco ACI brings you additional customer engagement opportunity in the solutions expo hall. We are featuring cool demos showcasing our joint solutions namely, ACI -F5 BIG-IP and ACI -BIG-IQ on both Aug 18 and 20, during the expo hours. Stop by the Cisco booth where product experts are available to engage in white-board sessions and to compliment the demos, we also run short duration presentations in the Cisco theatre at periodic intervals. Should you desire, we are happy to meet you in 1-1 meetings, so let us know how we can enrich your experience at the event

For all the hard work we all do at the event, there is plenty F5 offers to let us relax and enjoy. The networking event at the solutions expo in the evening (5 -7 PM) provides drinks and prize draws in addition to an exciting showcase of state of art technology innovations and demos. Network with your fellow attendees while enjoying tasty food and drink, knowledgeable guides, and more are awaiting you.

I am eager to see you all in Australia next week. There are some useful links for you to check out before your visit on how Cisco ACI and F5 work together on the innovation front.

For more information, Visit www.cisco.com/go/acif5

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