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Silvija Seres: Hello and welcome to Lørn in collaboration with Sisco. My name is Silvija Seres and our topic today is Networks, and my guest is Edvard Haugland, technical solution specialist from Sisco. Welcome Edvard. 

Edvard Haugland: Thank you, Silvija. 

Silvija: Edvard, this is the first in our Cisco series of podcast that we are doing digitally and across the Network, given that we are all quarantined in Norway. Yes, there has never been a more important time to talk about networks than now. Suddenly our life has been turned upside down personally and professionally. My kids are going to school over networks supported by Sisco and I'm doing all my work at least based on very important security and internet and other kinds of tools developed by Cisco. So, we are hoping you would help us understand how networks are relevant now more than ever, but also, we are going to go with a deep dive into two tree areas where you are specialist. One is Devops that is a new way of working with developing software, and the other one is Network security. Especially in this Covid times. 

Edvard: Perfect! 

Silvija: Before we do that, can tell us a little bit about yourself. How should people imagine Edvard? 

Edvard: That is a difficult question. They should imagine someone that is always trying to help people. One of my main motivations for working at Cisco right now, and many of the decisions I made in my life is related to that. I always try to find a way to have an impact on people. And even though I work for a private company right now, the impact that we have on societies is pretty big and that are one of the things that motivate me. 

Silvija: I have to ask you a couple of personal questions. You look Spanish but your surename is super Norwegian, Haugland. And I see that you joined Sisco in a trainee program in Amsterdam. Where are you from and what’s your education? 

Edvard: I am originally from Chile. I came to Norway about thirty years ago. In terms of education I studied business actually. I have a master from BI. Not very related to technology.  I studied Finance, business and that kind of stuff. And then I joined Cisco. I was doing stuff related to technology, I was always interested. I joined this trainee-program called Cisub that runs in Amsterdam. So, I started one year there, and then back to Norway. And we have people there that actually joined Cisco Norway now after the Crisis. 

Silvija: You are a good example of somebody that is a lifelong learner. If you are a data scientist now you have to be kind of techy, and you learned all of that at work? 

Edvard: Yes, pretty much. I had some fundamental knowledge about Cloud technologies, and accounting before I enter Cisco. But trough certifications and learning at work I have built my expertise. 

Silvija: Let’s talk a little about Cisco. If you have to introduce yourself to somebody at a party and they ask you were you work and you say Cisco, and they say, “what is that”, what would you say? 

Edvard: Cisco is the coolest company in the world and the best place to work according to “best place to work”. So, we don’t have a product, we are spread across many different technology areas, and we do a lot of things. We are known for working on networking, so that’s how we started to discuss that we met a few weeks ago. Cisco is all about connecting people, but now we also provide solutions for the datacenter related to technology in other areas. we have Cloud solutions, we have security solutions, collaboration solutions that is really relevant in these times. Lots of different things in software. 

Silvija: Ok. So, software, but often related to Networks. And I would like to invite you to say a few words about each of those things. How should people think about software for Networks. What is that, is that thing that lives in the router or is that thing that lives in my phone. And how should they think about Cloud and how should I think about security products? 

Edvard: Software comes in different layers. And I work with equipments, so switcher, router and so on. Even the things that people have at home that is typical networking equipments. Then it comes more specialized software for companies depend on the use-case. For example, having video communications, been able to deliver training online and that kind of things. If we think about security, it is about being able to provide Software that facilities and simplifies the implementation of security. Security is so complex right now that having a software that simplifies the implantation in the use of the security solutions is very critical. And that's what is going on, and what Cisco works on as well. 

Silvija: So all routers have a lot of Software built in. I will talk about four things, just to make it easier for people to remember. So, software for network, software for the clouds, software for collaboration and software for security. And basically, we just expect all of these things to work. It is actually fascinating with Corona, I plug into my BMX run by Cisco, or it might be Zoom or the Norwegian Whereby, but there is a lot of software behind this that makes these things goes fast enough and safe enough. So, for these collaboration tools to work they need to work at several levels across many kinds of equipment, and the users don't want to know. I don't worry whether I'm using same kind of browser or a PC or some other kind of equipment. It just has to work, and that’s where things get very difficult. You talk about new ways of developing this kind of software, and you are very keen on something called Devops. Can you say a few words about that?

Silvija: It's not only about developing Software. This comes back to how you tie together the infrastructure and then whatever comes on top. If you think about any organization, they don't care about what network they have. What they want is business value. Solutions for society and for customers and so on. So, the question is how we can do this in a more optimal way.

Edvard: So. there are there are cost pressures. Every organization is trying to cut costs related to IT or use for coming into market with new solutions. And the question is how can we make this process of tying the business, IT and the different sections of IT to work as a more cohesive body that kind of laser focus on delivering business value. Instead of fixing box in IT or fixing networks or other kinds, or even security right. Like security instead of thinking about that as something that comes after, how can we integrate security as part of everything we do. When we develop software, how can we integrate security into that development process. When we configure a network, how can we integrate security into that process. And that's kind of what Devops and our variation of that kind of tries to achieve. It is those gaining synergies from collaboration between different parts of an organization, to deliver a final product or solution. 

Silvija: So, basically, it's a holistic way of working across business and technology goals? Because very often technologies have worked in their Silo, you know fixing box as you say or working according to very clear specifications. And they say “you guys figure out how to deal with the business opportunities and challenges that this causes”. And now you're saying that what we need to work much more integrated with the business, and the business needs to own the technical problems and the technicians have to own the business problems as well.

Edvard: Exactly. And it is important that there is a good communication in a culture of collaboration. That's really what Devops is about. It's a about creating a culture where people collaborate across different departments. 

Silvija: So, does that actually involve also a culture of learning? One of the examples that you've given me that exemplifies this holistic thinking is that now that many companies believe that if they just move all of their applications in the cloud they are going to have to stop worrying about security, because it's all fixed in the cloud. But you say it's very much more complex than that. So that is kind of one business aspect of technology that actually requires the business guys to also learn something about Cybersecurity, about how these things are connected. So, it has to do with learning, right? 

Edvard: Absolutely, and it's cross-functional learning in all aspects. So, the developer needs to understand how the network works so when they develop Software they can see how this is going to impact the guy that's going to implement the software. Also, they need to know about security. The business needs to understand IT, and IT needs to understand how to translate the business requirements into IT solutions. So, it's absolutely as you're saying cross-functional, and I think that's what makes it all more exciting actually. Were talking about this with someone the other from the healthcare sector if it is important to be specialized. Yes, it is still important to be specialized, but you also need to keep an eye on everything else. Because your actions and what you do also affects other areas of the business, and that's what this is all about.

Silvija: I very much believe that the future will require these so-called t-shaped individuals, where you have this specialization as your vertical leg and then you have to learn about so many technologies but also business and society on this kind of horizontal leg. 

So, one other interesting dilemma that you served me before this podcast was this idea that automation will remove all the jobs in data centers, and what you're experiencing is that we've never needed more people in data centers than now. Tell us a little bit more about that. 

Edvard: So, people are very scared for things like “how is AI gonna affect my job”. So, that's kind of a big topic. But at the lower level people even worry if I have been managing my infrastructure in certain way, if I go to a more automated way how will this impact my job? Am I going to lose my job because now everything is automated? And there is where we kind of can't tie this back to Devops. So no, you are not going to lose your job. But again, it's funny because all these things that we have been discussing kind of come together here when we discuss this. Is like, are you willing to have this continuous learning process? Are you willing to kind of work more cross-functional? Because if you're willing to do those things you're going to have plenty to do. Now the world of opportunities is going to open to you. But if you want to continue just focusing on configuring switches and routers, probably you're not going to have a lot to do in the future. So that's kind of the way of thinking about it. 

Silvija: I think that's a very important point you're making, and we had exactly the same point made by a guy who is working with medicine and looking for new patterns in images that can help him discover some very rare versions of cancer. And he was saying that people thought that with AI reading images there will be no more jobs for geologists. But actually, they have more work than ever. Because we have so much materials and I think the same way with data centers or infrastructure jobs with it, they will have more work than ever, but they will have to learn to work the new ways and the new tools just like you're saying.

Edvard: Exactly, it's a new way of working. It's not that you're not going to have a job, but your job is going to change. And my job changes all the time, and I imagine your job changes as things change. That's the reality of today. 

Silvija: But then just a personal question again. Do you get tired by that? Do you get exhausted by the fact that your job keeps requiring you to learn all the time, or do you get energy from that?

Edvard: Personally I get energy, and what energizes me is having good leadership. So, when you have good leadership that explains clearly where we are going, why we're doing this and what kind of processes that is involved in this it's a lot easier. When you lack that leadership and when you're just given instructions without knowing where you are going, that I think makes it very difficult to both accept change, and also understand where to focus. But I think at Cisco we don't have that issue to be honest. 

Silvija: I think leadership is a great point in these times as well, and we'll get back to leadership opportunities now with the especially with Covid as well. I would like you to speak a little bit about the two projects you were most excited about last year. To me you mentioned lawfirm and one for an insurance company. And especially with the last one you were saying that they wanted to implement this Devsec model, but there was a danger of getting a vender lock-in. And I think that's also a wonderful point. So, would you tell us in very basic terms what were the projects and why were they exciting? 

Edvard: Yeah. So, actually both companies have pretty much the same goals. They are in a fast-paced industry. Things are changing, even in lawfirms. People might think “law is law”, you go to a court you argue and done. But things are changing, and they are discussing for exact how to use new technologies to improve customer experience and to resolve cases faster. In the insurance sector as well. They rely on all these analyses to make predictions and things like that, but generally speaking these two companies were trying to look at how can we adapt our operations in the data center. How can we use cloud technologies and so on, to both reduce costs, but also to be much faster to market. Because they had lots of ideas, but the question is how we go from the idea to the execution. And to be able to speed up the execution they need to change their operational models. And so, that is what the project were all about. To enabling these new operational models with implementing or having even the basic tools. Because all the tools were not made for this kind of fast paced environment. So, companies are needing to use new tools, and at the same time start using them in the way that they are meant to be used to be able to achieve this agility that they are looking for.

Silvija: I'm fascinated by you saying that you were trying to help them to avoid vendor lock-in. Basically, being completely dependent on one vendor, and you are a software vendor. So, one would imagine that your goal is to lock them into Cisco from here to all eternity. But the point is actually to teach them to use the right tools the right way, right? 

Edvard: Yeah, that's part of the strategy of Cisco. So, Cisco has made a very conscious strategic decision of building solutions that can inplug into any other software or hardware. It's true that we have integration. So, if you buy everything from Cisco you get the products plus a price of Integrations that give you added value you could say. But that's not a reality in most environments. So, customers have a bunch of open source tools that are wonderful, and they want to continue using them. Especially when you talk about developers. They have the tool set that is a mix of the shelf, plus some open source software. So, we want to enable all this operation and models, if a customer wants to go full in with Cisco that is great for us. We enable them, we give them the whole set. But if they want to mix and match they can also do that. So that's a strategic decision. Now that is up to the extent that is possible. So, there are some points where for Cisco to be able to really innovate we rely on our own protocols, which some of them become open standard protocols afterwards. But because we are on the edge of innovation, if we wait for the industry to catch up and create the rfc's and so on we never go forward. So, there is an element of proprietary solutions, but we try to be as open as possible.

Silvija: I think it's super cool. You also said that you are very impressed by how the public sector in Norway is going into this direction where they combine security infrastructure management and Cloud. Can you say very few words about why you are impressed? 

Edvard: I cannot name names, but we have many public sector customers that are the forefront during these times. Since we're talking about Devops that is relatively new still. Big companies like Netflix, Google, Facebook, they use this kind of models and they are kind of smaller companies are starting to adopt them as well. But we see that public sector organizations are also thinking that direction that they're building up the skills, they are building up the infrastructure. They are building operational models and they are thinking about it in that direction. So, when they come out with a request for new solutions, this have to comply with a set of security regulations but also support this operational models. And I think they're doing it in a way that is much more comprehensive and extensive that we see in many private sector companies right now.

Silvija: I agree with you and I actually think that several public sector companies that have the responsibility for this in Norway like Difi that have been very useful in terms of providing standard models and standard solutions that inspire the whole public sector. So, we are much more digitalized and secure in that sense then we actually give ourselves credit for in Norway. What do you think is relevant knowledge or learning for the future?

Edvard: It depends on the timeframe. In the short term it is actually security. We need to understand security a lot better, and how to design solutions. Because now systems are getting more complex and if we go back to how applications are being built and deliver right now. For example, you open your phone and you open DnB and the way this application have been built has changed dramatically. And that has increased the complexity that the same IT team for five years ago need to handle today. So, we need to learn much better how to build this security into our infrastructure, into our applications and so on in such a way that it becomes an integral part of the operations and of whatever we deliver as solutions. And the other thing is of course blockchain and artificial intelligence. I hope blockchain specially during the next five years is going to really pick up, and we're going to start seeing some cool implementations of blockchain. 

Silvija: Just in service of time I'd like us to go very briefly, because we have about five more minutes. We are now in this covid-19 lockdown period and we don't know how long it's going to last in Norway. Most of us work from home and learning new ways of working. And all the schools the kids work from home. It's actually worked shockingly well. And I'm wondering if you could share with us some of your perspectives on leadership, technical development and what we learn from this after the crisis as well. 

Edvard: I was actually thinking about it yesterday because we received like an internal survey about that, how we are doing at Cisco now that we are working from home. Because Cisco already like a week ago sent an order to all employees worldwide to work from home. And we are lucky in the sense that we have been working online for a long time. And that kind of goes back to leadership style as well. And it's the fact that we are empowered to plan our days the way that they work the best. Of course, there are certain roles where you need people to be physically in certain places. There's no way around it, but for the most part our leadership team Empower us to kind of mold our days, and to work in whatever way works best for us. And so, for us it's been relatively simple, and I think Norway has been lucky in the sense that we have very good infrastructure. So, the service providers here are top class and the type of capacity that they have in the Network's is incredible. So, they can support whatever spike in internet traffic pretty much, and on the other hand this is kind of more relaxed open culture that allows people to adapt quickly to these things and collaborate as well. We have seen that at Cisco with many public and private sector organizations where everybody's coming together in this book to help each other and work together to get this done. I think giving trust to employees and empowering them to work in different ways, and I guess those companies that have not had that before are struggling more than the ones that have done it. 

Silvija: I think I've heard people use the expression “digital dugnad”. But somebody was calling it “Tvangs-digitalisering” and I think it has to do with your perspective. But I think a lot of our sector actually has played on the advantages that you mentioned. So good infrastructure, actually quite good technical skills in the population and willingness to deal with the crisis because we've had quite a lot of challenging situations in this climate and culture and geography before so it's really interesting. And I think it's important that we learn from this for the long term as well. 

Edvard: Yes, our countries should learn from it. I imagine at least in this area we're doing especially well, but not all countries have the infrastructure. Nor the culture of using digital tools for working or collaborating. So, there are lots of things here. Lots of laws about working remotely flexibility for work and a bunch of things.

Silvija: Where should we go to learn, read or see more in materials about what you talked about?

Edvard: If you want to learn about these things go to internet. I mean, information is everywhere right now. A really good book that you recommended to me is the Phoenix project. That gives you a really good perspective on why these things are important and what kind of difference they can make at least collaborating across different organizations. But more generally speaking about cloud and all those things, certifications is one way if you're working professional in this. There is a lot of information and that's kind of the beauty of where we are today. If you want to learn just go out there and information is everywhere. 

Silvija: Do you have a motto?

Edvard: Yes, one is from Einstein where he says, “I have no special talent, i´m only passionately curious”.  And the other is from Malcolm X “Because the future belongs to those who prepare for it today”. So, I think both things fit really well, on what we have been discussing today. Prepare for tomorrow and don't be afraid of it, and be curious. 

Silvija: My final question is always, if you had to summarize our conversation with in one sentence or two. How would you summarize it?

Edvard: For two perspectives. One, if you work in IT, don't be afraid of these new technologies that are coming out, embrace them and learn about them. Learn how to use them and see how you can type whatever expect you have to continue being relevant and delivering value for communities, businesses and so on. And the other is to the public in general, be aware of the security risks that working from home bring with them. There are lots of risks that maybe you don't realize, so start working using stronger passwords use two factor authentications where you can. That kind of thing can come a long way with securing your everyday at your job, but also personally. 

Silvija: Edvard Haugland, technical solution Specialists from Cisco. Thank you for joining us today at Lørn and inspiring us about learning more about networks. 

Edvard: Thank you so much for having me Silvija. 

Silvija: And thank you for listening.

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