Only a few weeks remain for the Fall season to officially set in, and it's still quite hot in Washington DC. The fast approaching F5 Agility event is further adding a sizzle to the conference scene at the Gaylord National resort and convention center in DC.

During Aug 4-7, 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 F5 CEO Manny Rivelo 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. Manny will take you on 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 Manny's keynote.

Following Manny, Dean Darwin, Marketing SVP of F5 will deliver F5's forward looking vision.  Dean's session aligns well with Manny's keynote in that he will address Innovation, thought leadership, expanding business models (like As a Service) and strategies to increase customer satisfaction and financial excellence.

In the afternoon, we have two guest keynotes. Colin L. Powell the well-known statesman and retired General and Chris Tarbell, one of the most successful cyber security law enforcement officials of all time are going to entertain you. Do not miss the opportunity to listen to these legends.

Cisco Exec Shashi Kiran is joining F5 Exec Calvin Rowland and fellow Cisco exec Matt Smorto in a panel session Aug 5. For those of you not familiar with ACI, this panel session is a great opportunity to learn how Cisco and F5 are expanding their partnership, how their combined thought leadership is advancing the SDN landscape, and customer successes and momentum experienced by Cisco ACI, F5's BIG IP & BIG IQ in the marketplace. The panellists are seasoned industry experts and I promise it will be a treat to the attendees.

If you somehow missed the panel session, there is room to cheer. Shashi is hosting a breakout session titled "Deliver Application Agility with Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure the" next day, Aug 6, 10.30 am EST.  What's unique about this Breakout Session? Well, you will get to not only hear Shashi eloquently walk you through the role of Cisco ACI in today's Application-Oriented Economy, but also see customers and partners 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's breakout as I said earlier, also features a unique Partner segment towards the end. Mark Wall, Chief Architect from WWT, will join Shashi on stage to share their ACI experiences. How often do you get this comprehensive experience in a breakout session, one that is devoid of a sales pitch.  Sounds great, doesn't it?

For the technically oriented among you, we also have a technical breakout session by Ravi Balakrishnan (Cisco) and Payal Singh (F5) Aug 3.30 PM ETA. This session covers the integration architecture, value-props, and openness of the platform that the joint Cisco ACI-F5 solution brings to customers and partners.

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-BIG IP and ACI-BIG IQ on both Aug 5 and 6, during the duration of the expo hours. Stop by the Cisco booth where are 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 evening event on Aug 6 provides entertainment by Vince Neil (Motley Crew fame) allows attendees to step back and enjoy and get a prelude to their farewell tour "All Bad Things Must Come to An End" through December 31, 2015 in Los Angeles.

Network with your fellow attendees while enjoying tasty food and drink, entertaining music, knowledgeable guides, and more are awaiting you on Aug 6.

I am eager to see you all in Washington DC 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

https://f5.com/about-us/events/event/f5-agility-conference

Join our Community discussions on ACI and find out "What is your SDN Spirit Animal?"

Take the quiz and find out!