525,600 minutes.  An iconic Broadway anthem immortalized this number as the total number of minutes in a year.  At Cisco, we have spent many of these last 525,600 minutes developing, innovating and working together with customers and partners to help advance their Intent-based networking journeys.  We have experienced incredible momentum since introducing Intent-based Networking last June at Cisco Live Las Vegas and we are poised to do the same in the year to come.

As the song continues, the singers recount different ways to measure the passage of time.  For me, I can certainly measure my year by the number of conversations with customers and partners about the power of our technology and how our solutions have or can change their ability to deliver business outcomes.  If I had to call out a way for the Enterprise Networking team at Cisco to measure this last year, it would be in the staggering number of innovations created, tested, and released.

We have ignited our agile development process to deliver innovations starting with the Catalyst 9000 series which has been so successful, it is now the fastest ramping product in Cisco's history. We've introduced SD-Access (SDA), DNA Center, Encrypted Traffic Analytics (ETA), Analytics and Assurance (and acquired Viptela to deliver next generation SD-WAN capabilities) -software that will ultimately make the work of IT departments easier and more productive, and provide better experience for their employees and customers.

At Cisco Live Orlando earlier this week, Scott Harrell shared Cisco's next chapter in our Intent-based Networking journey with the introduction of DNA Center Platform. This open platform for innovation enables our partners and customers to build new applications and create key network integrations to make their businesses run better and be more agile.  Cisco Services is also working to help business leaders take full advantage of the new DNA Center platform, putting the data their networks are collecting to work in support of faster business outcomes.   Based on the amount of developers already working with our DevNet team and the applications being developed by our partners, I would venture that creating the DNA Center Platform were Cisco minutes well spent.

I'm looking forward to experiencing all the opportunities the next 525,600 minutes will provide to make our customers' networks safer, faster, more intelligent and more intuitive.

What do you want your network to accomplish in the next 525,600 minutes?  What will be your key measures of networking success this next year? We have the Catalyst 9000, DNA Center, SDA, Assurance, SD-WAN, and many other innovations still to come to help drive your business success.

I would greatly appreciate you taking a minute to share your thoughts with us, and how we at Cisco can help you and your business.