Cisco DNA is Cisco’s long-term strategy for enterprise networking architecture. As such, the platforms, technologies, and solutions described in this book are all in a state of rapid evolution and development, and therefore these should not be taken as the fixed and final expression of this architecture; if anything, consider these as merely the beginning of Cisco’s DNA journey.
To accurately reflect this dynamic and progressive state, and to appropriately conclude this book, the authors (all of whom serve as Cisco DNA architects) wanted to share some of their thoughts on how they see Cisco DNA evolving over the next few years.
Prognostication is always a risky business, and becomes even more so when you have to guard and limit expressions of thought leadership due to the stringent confidentiality requirements of a highly competitive industry. Nonetheless, this brief chapter summarizes a few of these expressions to give a sense of where Cisco DNA is heading, without giving away strategic implementation details.
The following list summarizes some thoughts by the authors on the future direction of Cisco DNA, arranged by technologies:
Programmable hardware: The Unified Access Data Plane (UADP) ASIC demonstrates the phenomenal agility, flexibility, capabilities, and performance that programmable ASICs bring to the network infrastructure devices; as such, expect to see programmable hardware pervasively embedded throughout the enterprise network infrastructure.
Software innovations: All enterprise platforms (routing, switching, wireless) will converge on a single network operating system: IOS XE. This will maximize feature modularity, syntax consistency, and operational simplicity, as well as accelerate feature development (as currently, a major part of the engineering efforts of a new feature is the porting of it across platforms; with IOS XE, such resources can be reallocated to developing, rather than merely transporting).
Protocol innovations: At Layer 2, expect to see wireless speeds continuing to increase (beyond 802.11ac, such as 802.11ax and beyond), with the same expectations for wired Multigigabit Ethernet (with the latter reaching 25GE and 100GE in the near future); at Layer 4+, look for extensions to protocols such as Virtual Extensible Local Area Networking (VXLAN) protocol that will enable greater policy flexibility, as well as support valuable metadata that could potentially be leveraged for richer network analytics.
Programmable interfaces: More platforms and functions will be supported via programmable interfaces; similarly, more sources of instrumentation will become available via model-based streaming telemetry. Software Development Kits (SDKs) will also enable third-party products supporting model-based programmable interfaces to be supported and managed with Cisco DNA Center.
Virtualization: Look for more end-to-end service chaining (rather than local-only), extending virtual network functions from the access layer of the campus all the way through to the data center and/or cloud; expect automation to spin up virtual machines and containers on demand. Also anticipate an increasing number of third-party partners developing applications to be hosted within IOS XE containers on Cisco devices; such applications complement core networking functions in a variety of manners, and as such, Cisco is encouraging developers to use this platform for their applications, thus delivering maximum options to our customers.
Enterprise fabric: Expect Software-Defined Access (SD-Access) to extend beyond the campus, fully integrating with all the best features of software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN), from Cisco’s Viptela acquisition. The building blocks have already been laid to enable end-to-end segmentation, policy-driven application treatment, and comprehensive analytics; all that remains is the cohesive integration of these blocks to collectively make enterprise fabric a reality in the near future, and this entire enterprise fabric will be centrally managed from within Cisco DNA Center.
IoT (Internet of Things): Although not discussed at length in this book, expect to see extended Cisco DNA integration with IoT devices, technologies, and services.
Analytics: Look for analytics to become more distributed (rather than centralized). Also keep an eye out for more application programming interface (API) integrations with data sources beyond the enterprise network, including peer analytics systems (as this industry—and the offerings within it—is just exploding). Further, expect to see completely autonomous self-remediating workflows for common network issues in the near future.
Machine learning: Machine learning will be applied to an extended number of use cases (beyond wireless). Look for a greater emphasis on predictive analytics (versus cognitive); look also for applications of machine reasoning for troubleshooting and remediation.
Cisco DNA Center: Cisco DNA Center will become the integration point between the network and the rest of IT; the APIs being developed today to support a fixed set of use cases will be the foundational building blocks that will allow IT to leverage the enterprise network as a single, cohesive, programmable entitiy (and vice versa); additionally, Cisco is actively developing an ecosystem of partners to use Cisco DNA Center as a platform, on which they can port (or build) their best-of-breed solutions, alleviating them of all the platform-specific complexity of integrating directly with network devices.
Cross-domain orchestration: As intent-based networking extends beyond the enterprise, policy and analytics orchestration must similarly span across domains, so as to integrate with Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), Tetration, Network Assurance Engine (NAE) in the data center, Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO), and Platform for Network Data Analytics (PaNDA) in the service provider, etc.; such orchestration will heavily depend on the definition of common policy language(s) across such domains to express intent, as well as common methods of correlating analytics data to the expressed intent.
Cloud integration: Cisco DNA Center and supporting technologies will allow the enterprise to extend its reach into the cloud for policy, automation, and assurance of their applications. Further, Cisco DNA Center will leverage the cloud to augment and extend its on-premises capabilities; while solutions in this space are nascent at the time of writing, exciting innovations are being developed to extend Cisco DNA Center capabilities via its cloud-tethered connection.
Finally, consider not only the future of the network, but also the future of the network administrator. It cannot be overemphasized that now, more than ever, with these major evolutionary changes occurring in the enterprise network, you need to remain current or, better yet, be ahead of the curve. Expand your lower-level skills, such as configuring network devices via the command-line interface (CLI), to include programming skills (which can be acquired by taking advantage of resources like Cisco DevNet). Also, as the lines between NetOps, DevOps, and SecOps are all expected to blur, it is highly recommended to expand awareness and skillsets into these adjacent technology areas. Furthermore, aim not only to broaden your technology skillsets, but also to raise them. This means developing a deeper understanding of the business-level requirements of your company, always looking for ways to marry such organizational objectives to specific technologies that can deliver them. The more you can understand and speak the language of the CIO, the more impact and influence you will bring to your company, remaining a valuable (and not replaceable) employee during this disruptive transition to intent-based networking in the enterprise.
Again, it bears repeating that these are simply predictions by the authors at the time of writing of where they think Cisco DNA is heading. How Cisco DNA ultimately evolves will be primarily driven by customer demand as well as marketplace pressures.
In summary: Cisco’s DNA journey is just beginning, and is already proving itself to be a bold and dynamic ride, with possibilities that are wide open and very exciting!
Are you ready?