If we use last year’s Interop as the OpenFlow/SDN coming out party, it took just over a year for Cisco to fully develop and announce a comprehensive multi-segment strategy.  Their SDN encompassing strategy is called Cisco Open Network Environment (ONE).  Congratulations, Cisco!  If they got David Ward back from Juniper sooner, maybe the strategy would have already been announced.  Joke…I really don’t have any insight as to who was or is responsible for the strategy, but would imagine it to be a fairly extensive team.

I think it was a good move to announce during Cisco LIVE.  Customers worship Cisco, not just for the products, solutions, architectures they develop, but also for this week long party where they receive gifts and gadgets, and soak up some of the most technical content in the industry, but most importantly can be around like-minded individuals.  That is the most important thing for those that are technically inclined and is often not understood by those who aren’t “down in the weeds.”