We have been writing a lot of blogs for network engineers and developers. But, I recently realized that Cisco Partners may benefit from a little information about DevNet. If you are a Cisco partner, potential partner, or work for one, then this blog is for you.

Let us start off with some data, which you may know already, and which is, or should be, driving your business today. According to the Global Center for Digital Business Transformation, about 4 in 10 businesses will fail because of digital disruption by 2020. The full report is available on their web site.

If you are in the technology business, the obvious take-away here is that you are (or should be) helping your customers avoid being digitally disrupted. In simple terms, you are helping your customers stay competitive. And, noting that we technology companies are also listed in this graphic, our ability to move faster, innovate the customer experience and embrace digital transformation is crucial to our own success.

Holding onto data for one more moment, we find that our partners, or potential partners, have over 5 milliondevelopers working for them. And, if you count ISVs, we're looking at 11 million developers who are trying to innovate and solve problems. This data comes from Evans Data Corporation and is shown in the graphic pictured to the right.

That's a lot of resources! Hopefully, those resources are working on digital transformation. The data says they should be. Given that the data says you are spending a lot of resources on developers, and that they are most likely working on digital transformation, let's transition to how Cisco is relevant to this conversation.

DevNet Helps Your Developers Be More Innovative, Faster

If you want your developers to be more successful, then they should be taking a look at Cisco's Developer Community. We call it DevNet and it is located at developer.cisco.com.

DevNet is the key resource for everything 'developer' at Cisco. It is the place to find inspirational applications, learn about our APIs and connect with other developers. Yes, Cisco has APIs. In fact, we have a ton of them and you can use those APIs to help your own business and your customers with digital transformation. I'd like to show you a few stories on how partners are successfully using Cisco technology, APIs and DevNet.

iland Uses Cisco APIs to Automatically Control Infrastructure

One Cisco partner, iland, is rated as one of the top providers of Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). iland sits in the upper right area of the Gartner Magic Quadrant -a great place to be. What may not be apparent is that the DRaaS service, by iland, is a Cisco Powered service. In other words, it is built on a Cisco platform and utilizes Cisco APIs you can learn about with Cisco DevNet.

We had the opportunity to talk with iland's CTO, Justin Giardina, about their service and capture it on video.

What we learned is unique about iland's DRaaS, and which is helping their success, is that they provide a northbound interface into their solution. This enables their customers to programmatically make more efficient use of the iland service. In turn, iland utilizes various Cisco APIs to automatically control infrastructure. So, throughout the entire architecture, APIs are enabling automation, which goes all the way from the compute and storage devices to the end customers. And, according to iland, Cisco DevNet was very helpful with documentation and example code for the APIs they used.

By Using a DevNet Sandbox, Phunware Saves Dollars!

What's a DevNet Sandbox? It's a 24X7 cloud based lab service where you can run your code on hosted Cisco infrastructure. In other words, you can start developing without having to buy the platform. You can use our labs and hardware to test your proof of concept ideas.

A great example of a partner that uses our Sandboxes is Phunware. Phunware provides companies with solutions that enable their customers to have an integrated experience across mobile and traditional delivery methods. I recently spoke with their CTO, Luan Dang about what they have to offer and how they have partnered up with Cisco to get there. Below, is the video of us talking about their technology, the Cisco API they used and how DevNet helped them.

If you want to see a great example of what Phunware does for folks, here's their video, which shows an example of what they have done for a healthcare company.

Another exciting capability of Phunware is that they can help both do-it-yourself customers and customers that need a full suite of services. For partners, their SDK could enable you to write your own custom applications.

Turnstyle uses Cisco APIs to help Subway

Moving from healthcare to food, let's talk about Turnstyle, another Cisco partner that has used our APIs and DevNet to help a customer with digital transformation. Our own Colin Lowenberg, who product manages the Meraki API, talked with Ryan Freeman, VP of Partnerships at Turnstyle Solutions. You can learn a little bit about their solution in this video.

Turnstyle is exciting because they increase customer retention at companies like Subway. As Ryan says in the video, wi-fi can be so much more than just access. The network platform, and its APIs, enable digital transformation that enables your customers to better market to their customers. Ryan says that our communities, where you can collaborate with other companies, and the API documentation, are the key value propositions that DevNet delivers to Turnstyle.

These are just a few examples of how partners have worked with us to become more successful. We've seen how they differentiate themselves from their competition. They have created innovative and unique offers. And Cisco DevNet has been part of their journey.

Three Things You Can Do

1. If you would like to explore how you might work with us, then I invite you to visit DevNet Online. It's free.
2. If you are coming to Berlin for Cisco Live, we would love to meet your developers in the DevNet Zone. Please, bring em and have them come to the Zone, where we can talk with them about what they are doing and show them possibilities with Cisco APIs/technology.
3. Finally, we really want to hear from you. We'd like to hear about your experiences with DevNet. Do you have an interesting application to share? Would you like to talk with our experts about an idea? Connect with us! To ask questions, head to DevNet and on most pages you will find a "Chat with us!" icon in the lower right. That's a bot that adds you to a Spark room where we can talk. It was all written with APIs we can show you how to use. Or, if you want to share your innovation, direct message me and we'll be happy to talk.