With DevNet Cisco Renews Attempt to Court Developers

Cisco has a new developer program called DevNet, aimed at attracting developers for building Cisco-enabled applications faster, boosting the networking giant’s place in the cloud computing world. The goal is to court programmers to write apps to enhance or manage Cisco-powered networks.

Cisco is primarily known for networking hardware, but CEO John Chambers has been moving the company away from its traditional hardware-centric strategy. The company has sharpened its SDN focus and pledged $1 billion for data centers in a cloud play.

Attracting developers is key to keeping people within its ecosystem as well as attracting new customers via the apps that are developed. Cisco has long had a developer program, called Cisco Developer Network. The main differences with DevNet are the addition of a developer sandbox and REST-based APIs.

Cisco is also building a team of developer evangelists, community managers and developer support engineers in support of DevNet. The rebranding of the developer program and renewed push highlights how important Cisco thinks developers will ultimately be in the scheme of things.

Unlocking intelligence from the network using applications provides value to the Cisco ecosystem. “As Cisco adds powerful software and services to our market-leading hardware portfolio, we recognize that developers are critical to creating value for our customers,” wrote Susie Wee, VP and CTO of networked experiences at Cisco.

“With the advent of so many market transitions—mobility, cloud, the Internet of Everything (IoE), the application-centric infrastructure -- driving and accelerating innovation, the value of our networked platforms is greatly enhanced by the applications that run on them."

Cisco also has a growing cloud security play. The company recently participated in a funding round for OpenDNS, a predictive threat intelligence startup. Cisco is closely tracking enterprise data and mobility security, which probably helped land OpenDNS on its radar. OpenDNS is doing interesting things around security at the heart of Cisco’s playground: the network.

The company launched Managed Threat Defense in April, a managed security solution that applies real-time, predictive analytics to detect attacks and protect against advanced malware across customers’ extended networks.