F5 Agility 2017 ready to rock Chicago – Countdown starts now

Chicago in August is known for film and food festivals, music events and many more fun stuff. And this fall season, we have the F5 Agility event further adding a sizzle to the conference scene at the Hilton Chicago. From a Cisco standpoint, F5 Agility 2017 prominently features Cisco ACI and Tetration Analytics joint solutions with F5, so join us at the event to learn about the future of application delivery, share best-practices with influential decision-makers, connect with technology leaders, and have some fun at the Agility closing gala at the House of Blues.

During July 31 – Aug 3, we are going to hear F5’s leaders, customers, and partners share how the latest solutions from F5 are transforming what’s possible for today’s organizations. In about three years, Cisco ACI, Tetration Analytics and F5 partnership has demonstrated significant success in our joint solution momentum and customer adoption. I am pleased to invite you all to attend this premier industry event and get insights on how F5 and Cisco are bringing the power of cloud, security, data centers, converged systems, and as-a-Service together to enable fast, efficient, and secure application delivery in today’s challenging hybrid environments.

First things first – What’s new in 2017:

Increased hands-on lab offering by Cisco & F5

Broader technology topics that go beyond F5 products

Increased technical community access in F5 Lounge

This year we have a galaxy of accomplished keynote speakers. F5’s CEO Francois Locoh-Donou kick-starts the event with his keynote. Following Francois on keynotes include Tech futurist Pablos Holman, Gigaom research analyst David Linthicum, Emmy nominated and self-professed wonderjunkie Jason Silva, F5’s EVP of Worldwide Sales, John DiLullo, F5 Calvin Rowland, SVP of Business development at F5, and many more.

Cisco Technical Breakouts:

And now let’s segue to Cisco Sponsor breakouts. Cisco a Platinum sponsor, has a big presence this year at F5 Agility with technical breakouts, hands-on Lab sessions and world of solution demos. Cisco ACI Expert and Product Manager Ahmed Dessouki and F5’s Vincent Ng are co-hosting a breakout session titled “Tetration Analytics and F5 Cloud Technologies” Aug 2, 2.10 PM local time. What’s unique about this Breakout Session? They will talk about how the joint integrated solution brings unprecedented value to customers in the emerging analytics‐driven security space by taking advantage of the L4‐7 analytics in F5 BIG‐IP and Cisco Tetration Analytics to deliver application dependency mapping, security policy enforcement, application segmentation, and more. Attend this session to learn how we deliver a comprehensive full‐stack network analytics, application delivery, security solutions to segment and secure application flows across the Data Center.

This year, Cisco has a second breakout session hosted by the popular pair, Insieme Product Manager Ahmed Dessouki and F5’s Vincent Ng, Aug 2, 1 PM local time. The session titled “DC Automation with Cisco ACI and F5 iWorkflow” takes attendees on a tour of how businesses are increasingly under pressure to deliver value to their customers fast with the lowest TCO, and how an agile infrastructure is paramount in addressing this requirement. F5 and Cisco have collaborated to create an F5 private cloud solution for Cisco ACI or NX-OS networking, which provides customers choice and flexible deployment options for diverse use cases. Attend this session to learn how F5 private cloud package with Cisco provides a pre-validated, risk-minimized solution for deploying your applications in newly managed, traditional, or standalone modes, while providing a seamless experience in transitioning from legacy networks to a policy-based, software-defined architecture.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Cisco-F5 Led Labs

Cisco and F5 are also offering two 4 hour, joint hands-on Lab session featuring Cisco ACI and F5 iWorkflow, one led by F5 and one led by Cisco The F5 led Labs occurs on July 31, 8 am Local time, and deals with topic “Deploy F5 using iApps using Cisco ACI”. This Lab session will give attendees hands-on experience integrating F5 BIG-IP into Cisco ACI architecture—you’ll deploy applications using F5 iApps and dynamic device package. We will step through the end-to-end workflow that includes: application template creation; generation of dynamic device package; creation of logical device cluster; creation of service graph based on application template; assigning service graph to End Point Groups (EPGs); and deploying iApps based Virtual Server.

The Cisco led Labs occurs on Aug 1, 1 PM local time. This Lab session wil help you take the next steps from the “Deploy F5 using iApps in Cisco ACI” lab, learn how programmability constructs offered by both Cisco APIC and F5 BIG-IP/iWorkflow automate end-to end L4-L7 service insertion process on Cisco APIC. Get hands on experience on using Ansible as the DevOps tool to create APIC tenants, bridge domains, End Point Groups (EPG’s), application profiles, service graphs, as well as iWorkflow tasks such as upload iApps, create templates and download the device package. Attending “Deploy F5 using iApps in Cisco ACI” lab on Monday is recommended but not a requirement.

Both the F5 led and Cisco led Labs are taught by Ahmed Dessouki (Cisco) and Vincent Ng (F5).

Demos at Solutions Expo:

That is not all. Cisco ACI and Tetration Analytics brings you additional customer engagement opportunity in the solutions expo hall. We are featuring cool demos showcasing our joint solutions Cisco ACI and Cisco Tetration Analytics with F5 iWorkflow, on both Aug 1 and 2, during the duration of the expo hours. Stop by the Cisco booth where our product experts are available to engage in white-board sessions and to compliment the demos, we also do whiteboard illustrations in the Cisco theatre at periodic intervals. Should you desire, we are happy to meet you in 1-1 meetings, so let us know how we can enrich your experience at the event.

For all the hard work we all do at the event, there is plenty F5 offers to let us relax and enjoy. This year we are taking over the House of Blues in Chicago. Agility 2017’s closing celebration features a spectacular mix of comedy, rock, and electronic dance music.

Entertainment includes:

Jay Mohr Comedian, actor, radio host and best-selling author, Jay Mohr has been performing standup comedy since he was sixteen years old. With a career that has spanned over three decades, Jay has always pushed himself to be more than just a comic.

L. A Vation Based in Los Angeles, California, the entertainment capital of the world, L.A.vation derives its name from the hit song “Elevation”, the third single released from U2’s 2000 album, All That You Can’t Leave Behind. L.A.vation has faithfully crafted an amazingly accurate show, incorporating memorable stage elements from past U2 concerts with spot-on musical execution, while emphasizing the pride and passion of the four lads from Dublin.

D Js From Mars DJs From Mars bring the mash-up attitude into Electronic Dance Music. Their style is a 360° blend of every kind of musical genre, with the addition of their “Alien” basslines and beats. They started remixing pop and rock hits for their own gigs, just for fun, and soon they were recognized as one of the biggest names in the bootleg scene.

Their videos on YouTube reached over 70 million views and the hype is still growing…
I am eager to see you all in Chicago next week. There are some useful links for you to check out before your visit on how Cisco ACI, Cisco Tetration Analytics and F5 work together on the innovation front.

For more information, Visit www.cisco.com/go/acif5,