"We are on the cusp of something special," says Robert Bailkoski, CEO of Logicalis. "Combining different software and hardware solutions enables the outcomes that our customers need." He, and other Cisco partners, have used software and automation to accelerate their business success.

And as Meredith Rose, Consulting System Engineer at World Wide Technology, says. "There are no boundaries to what you can do with automation."

These Cisco partners have been skilling up their teams to lead in software and automation with DevNet. They are making sure they will have the capabilities to anticipate the needs of their customers -many of whom are themselves heavily investing in digital transformation.

Logicalis' Bailkoski told me, "DevNet is the glue that makes those solutions possible."

We'd like DevNet to help you, too.

From Crisis to Growth 

We know that the whipsawing in the last year of how businesses work and serve their customers has strained IT teams and business models. We moved from business-as-usual to having work-from-home workforces. We closed storefronts and schools overnight and then opened them up in new configurations. We've backtracked and sidestepped, and we've adapted.

At first, this was simply a crisis for IT departments to manage. The challenges were large, but straightforward. But over time it became clear that the real challenges were more subtle. That the businesses that adapted to this change the most efficiently were the ones who would gain the most ground in the unsteady economy.

IT teams need to rely on automation to adapt to these ongoing changes. Rebuilding networks and fabrics manually, machine-by-machine, simply doesn't scale to the rate of change we're having to manage right now.

So it is not surprising to me that our partners say that Digital Transformation projects are getting approved very quickly now. Brad Haas, Director of Cloud, DevOps, and Automation Services at Presidio, told us that his company has seen, "about 94% growth in sales related to automation services."

Workloads are shifting alongside product lineups and business strategies, and it takes a flexible and agile infrastructure to support these changes. It takes automation. At DevNet, we're doing what we can to help our partners keep pace with these needs.

For example, Jose Bogarin Solano, Chief Innovation Officer and Co-Founder of Altus, a DevNet Specialized partner based in Costa Rica and serving customers across the Americas, had a project in which he needed to help keep his National Health Department ahead of the spike in call volume due to the pandemic. His solution involved moving client communications happening in Facebook chats over to a more robust contact center, and then using voice recognition and AI platforms to automate the next steps to connect healthcare clients with caregivers -including recognizing critical medical issues in which a user needed to be connected with a physician immediately. Bogarin Solano leveraged Altus' DevNet capabilities to help his customer create this solution.

It's a good example of how building up software skills and software practices gives partners new ways to serve their customers.

DevNet for Software, Automation, and Cloud 

We started to support these new skill paths several years ago, but we really kicked this into gear just over one year ago (February 24, 2020, to be precise), with the launch of DevNet certification programs designed to help individuals and companies upgrade their skills to be software-ready.

So far, more than 8,000 developers have DevNet certifications, and several of our partners have been digging into these programs as well. WWT has more than 20 developers with DevNet certifications and is our first DevNet Advanced partner. Meredith Rose, Consulting System Engineer at WWT, says she's found that DevNet certifications, "can only help your customers -and your business." WWT Network Architect Joel King adds, "It's gotten us to work more cohesively as a team."

You and your teams can use this frame of mind, in combination with software skills, as the foundation to build new ways of working. You can speak the language of DevOps with software teams, as you integrate automation into both private data centers and public clouds. You can innovatealongsideyour customers instead of just for them. It leads to deeper, more holistic, more rewarding engagements.

We are happy to see that building capabilities in software and automation -which is precisely what the DevNet certification programs do -helps you elevate the conversations you have with your customers and solve new problems for them. And it gives your employees the confidence to innovate.

Bailkoski says that, "In every organization, there is a seam of creativity that needs to be unleashed. It's not something you can artificially create. You've got to provide tools and mechanisms. We use DevNet to help us with that." He says, "DevNet is the glue that makes those solutions possible."

As your team continues to skill up and solve deeper challenges for your customers, your competitive differentiation will likely accelerate as well. You'll develop expertise and intellectual property that you can code into unique software offerings. DevNet is about enabling our partners to differentiate, to innovate, and to create profitable services and offers.

As Rickard ?stman, co-founder of Miradot AB says, "We have found a lot of value in standardizing how we work with software. And DevNet helped us."

Get Specialized 

Our DevNet Specialization program is for partners who have DevNet-certified talent, a proven software practice, and demonstrated customer success. This level of engagement with DevNet provides unique benefits, like API technical support and pre-sales consulting, co-marketing opportunities, access to Cisco gear for your own internal use, and more. Please read our e-book on DevNet Specialization for the full list of benefits and how to qualify.

DevNet-specialized partners are able to help their customers, with software, automation, cloud, and DevOps solutions. They can help them complete their digital transformations. I'm proud of our partners and our DevNet community, and I hope we can join you on your journey.

Please see my Cisco Live Partner Early Access Experience session,
Enabling Customer Agility Cisco DevNetto hear first-hand how
our partners are successfully transforming their business.

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