Automation and Programmability

(Music) Thank you so much for joining us in the studio today. We're going to be jumping into a section called Automation and Programmability, and I'm your host Lauren Deal. I'll be learning right along with you. But the star of the show, Anthony Sequeira is going to be walking us through this, but Anthony, tell us a little bit about yourself. Sure, Lauren. My name is Anthony Sequeira, as you heard, and I am one of the full-time edutainers here at ACI Learning. If you're going through our library, you'll see quite a bit of me, one of the full-timers here, and I'm thrilled to be bringing this Automation and Programmability module to you. One of the reasons why is I'm old. I am old. I've been doing this decade after decade after decade, 30 years in networking and computer science-related stuff. That's good news for all of us because I have seen the evolution that we are going to be discussing here. Automation and Programmability has continued to become more and more important in the world of networking, and in this module, we'll be seeing why that is. You are very humble. He is passionate about this because he's also a CCIE. Tell him about that. Yeah. I did, after many attempts, succeed with the Cisco Certified Internet Work Expert Certification, the CCIE. It's considered the PhD in the networking field, and I suppose that is because it's so difficult to acquire. There is a big three-hour written exam, and then there's a large eight-hour hands-on practical exam where you have to really show off your skills in security and networking. Yes, I've got the qualifications as well to guide us through this material. I just wanted you to know that when someone has passed their CCIE, you know we're in good hands, and so we're going to be learning from the best of the best. You're in the right spot. Speaking about talking about what we're learning, what are we covering? Yeah. One of the things that we're going to be looking at is why is automation a big deal? Why is programmability a big deal? What kind of benefits do those give us? What kind of benefits can we achieve from that? And then we're also going to be looking at specific examples. We'll talk about controller-based networking. We'll talk about software-defined networking, and we'll even have some fun drilling down into some of the details, like REST-based APIs and why they're so popular these days, and a data representation format that has become extremely popular called JSON. So we will get into some details, Lauren, in addition to talking quite a bit of theory. Well, I actually have become really, really interested in networking, and I still have a kind of, I'm going to call myself a novice, but a great interest. Who else would be an ideal person to watch this with us? I'll tell you, anyone that is interested in networking at any level, this is for you because this is a glimpse into our future. This is where network technology is going, and you don't need any particular skill set to enjoy this module. I mean, I always kind of assume an A-plus level of knowledge. You know what a computer is, you know what a network is, etc. But yeah, we're going to really start from the ground up in this discussion. All right, so we're going to start with the foundation and then really build up, and so you're in the right place. Anthony and I will invite you to join us in our first episode so you can have more knowledge about automation and programmability.