With sunny skies, and an entertainment calendar filled with music, shows, immersive experiences, Las Vegas is a great city to visit in the summer. For me, the special draw is Cisco Live Las Vegas 2022, and the opportunity to meet, learn and collaborate with industry experts across Data Center and Cloud Networking.

A week+ from now, Cisco Live 2022 will be ready to sizzle at the Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas. From a Cisco Cloud Networking standpoint, Cisco Nexus Dashboard, Cisco ACI, and Nexus 9000 Series switches are showing up in a big way.

If you're not joining us live, fear not, there are more opportunities than ever to participate and engage virtually.

Read on to learn what you can expect and experience at this buzzing event, and a tour of how Cisco Data Center and Cloud Networking is ready to engage and enrich you.

Can't-miss keynotes

At the outset, I would recommend that you attend all keynotes to understand Cisco's strategy for emerging technology trends and market transitions. Keynotes and Innovation showcases provide insight and strategic direction. With compelling innovation, the power of IT, and a focus on meaningful impact in our communities, businesses can drive change and leave a lasting impact for generations to come. Join Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins and other technology leaders on Tuesday, June 14 at 8:30 AM PST, as they share Cisco's vision for the future and the innovations that will create hybrid, secure, and connected experiences for everyone.

Do not miss keynote innovation talks occurring throughout the week. Cisco Live's Innovation Showcases offers a look at the latest innovations from Cisco, and they provide the context and inspiration today's IT professionals need to create the world of tomorrow. The Innovation Showcase format will include product and service innovations, along with customer case studies, to provide a dynamic exchange of ideas that sets the course for an informative and engaging week.

For a ringside view of big news in Cloud Networking and hybrid cloud, I strongly recommend the innovation session featuringCisco VP Ish Limkakengon the topic"Unlocking the possibilities of Hybrid Cloud"at 11:30am PT on Monday June 13.

We also have innovation sessions featuring Security, IoT, Enterprise Networking and many other hot topics. Make sure to check out the full Session catalog.

Take a DevNet deep dive

Get hands on with Cisco Data Center and Cloud Networking at this year's Cisco Live DevNet Zone. We're hosting multiple sessions, workshops, demos and learning labs featuring ACI, NX-OS, and Nexus Dashboard. Cisco DevNet Zone is a beehive of all excitement at all Cisco Live events and many attendees find it very compelling given its appeal to all personas from beginners to API experts. Over the years, DevNet community has grown to 500,000+ members and offers software certifications starting with this edition of Cisco Live. DevNet certifications are designed for both network engineers and software developers and provides Associate, Specialist, Professional and Expert level paths to specialize.

The top draw at the DevNet zone is the specialCloud Networking takeover session(DEVNET-1687) at 10am PT on Thursday, June 16. Do not miss this session as you will get to hear Cisco Exec and Technical Marketing VP Yousuf Khan present in his intro speech about how Cisco ACI's open API approach with Cloud Networking and its broad presence in Cisco DevNet have helped customers get a fast-ramp to learn, test and deploy our Data center technologies across diverse use-cases and as a pre-integrated solution jointly with our technology ecosystem partners.

" I am looking forward to connecting directly with developers and sharing the exciting work our teams are doing to meet the needs of data center engineers who are eager to expand their operation practices wherever their network needs to span."
-Yousuf Khan, VP Technical Marketing, Cloud Networking

Following Yousuf's intro, Srinivas Kotamraju, Senior Director, from our Cloud Networking business unit, will talk about how Cisco is tackling the IT challenge of managing hyper-distributed workloads. He will also demonstrate new capabilities designed to bring simplicity to network operations, changing the way customers configure, operate, and analyze cloud networking. At the end of the Takeover session, the DevNet zone will also feature a "Raffle quiz" fun event where you get to crack tech questions and get a chance at winning Bose Headsets as top winners' prizes. We also have setup a Demo Pod in DevNet zone where Cisco's latest Cloud Networking innovations will be featured during Wednesday and Thursday show hours. A full hour of giveaways, happy hour and fun awaits you. Be sure to reserve this takeover session slot in your calendar for Thursday.

Get hands on at the World of Solutions (WOS)

The World of Solutions is the energetic core of Cisco Live. Think of it as the place to be when you are not in a session. It is a lively pace with 100's of Cisco partners ready to engage you. Join us for our Welcome Reception on Monday evening from 4 to 6 PM local time. We hope to see you there!

The 2022 Cisco showcase in the World of Solutions (WOS) enables you to immerse yourself in the Cisco Showcase where hybrid work takes center stage through more than 100+ demos.

Our goal is to let you discover the latest Cisco software solutions that provide the visibility and management that IT managers need to transform business. Dive deeper and learn even more about specific products, industry solutions, services, and hardware. Explore the Cisco Showcase for specifics.

At Cisco Live 2022 Vegas WOS this year, there will never be a dull moment. We have stacked a rich technology demo solutions menu featuring Full-Stack Observability, Hybrid Cloud, IoT, Cloud Networking, Software Services, Security, among major ones. Check the full demo list here.  Specifically, on Cloud Networking front, we have demos on "automating and simplifying hybrid clouds" theme (featuring ACI, Nexus Dashboard, and Infrastructure-as-Code). In addition, hardware pedestals will showcase our Nexus portfolio evolution and latest offerings on Cisco Nexus 9000 Series and Cisco MDS switches. The list of Data Center Networking demos is vast and the best way for you to experience them all is to stop by at our demo booths in WOS.

Choose your own adventure with breakout sessions

To your heart's delightis how I will describe Cisco technical breakout sessions. Yes, we have close to 1,000 breakouts from industry recognized experts at the show. Cisco ACI, Nexus Dashboard and other Cloud Networking breakouts feature legends of the ACI domain including Takuya Kishida and Maurizio Portolani presenting stimulating half day-long session (TECDCN-2001) on deployment best practices. I recommend PSO breakout PSODCN-2352 by Jim Mathers and Ravi Balakrishnan. that takes you on a journey of true Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to standardize, introduce process, and then document & build pseudo-code to increase speed and agility for common network operations tasks.

With the growing emphasis on DevOps and Infrastructure as Code (IaC), automation toolchains like Terraform and Ansible, we offer more sessions this year, and mark Lionel Hercot's IaC focused sessions (DEVWKS-29931, DEVNET-3005) on your calendar. DevNet czar Quinn Snyder is presenting a host of IaC focused sessions as well, notable among them being DEVLIT-2785, DEVWKS-2252 to get an Introductory overview on IaC with Terraform and Ansible. Daniel Schmidt is presenting on topic "Lesson learned from fully automated ACI as Code" (DEVNET-2097). Daniel is illustrating with examples, how Terraform like tools help achieve this in a production envt. It is hard for me to list all breakouts. Visit the sessions catalog to choose from a variety of topics on Cloud Networking.

Connect with your peers

As a Cisco Live attendee, you benefit from the opportunity to interact with your peers, Cisco staff and partner technical experts in both structured and informal settings. Our Welcome Reception and Customer Appreciation Event are the highlights of the week's social calendar. Get ready to be entertained Wednesday evening at our annual celebration event!

Read more on the Social Events & Networking Onsite section. Monday's welcome reception at the WOS, Wednesday's Customer appreciation event are the highlights.

Bonus Event

This year we have Dave Matthews and Brittany Howard ready to entertain us for a full evening of great music, so please join us at the Thomas & Mack center, located on the campus of UNLV.

I can go on and on, but I would never be able to cover all the excitement in store. There is so much more you can explore on your own, and our Meet and Greet ambassadors will be happy to assist you at the show. As for me, if time permits, I plan to visit some shows, and if time permits Madame Tussauds. Safe travels and a happy Cisco Live.

Join us for Cisco Live 2022 in Las Vegas