Wendell Odom is a well-known author of many Cisco CCNA/CCNP/Networking books. In fact, I’ve got one of his books on my desk. Like so many people, Wendell has recognized that there’s a change coming in Networking which is the introduction and propagation of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for network devices. These new APIs are tied to the functional change introduced via Software Defined Networks (SDN). Many people know that SDN has become a big deal for automating network hardware to respond to changes, push new configurations as well as configuring new equipment. However, what many people do not know is where to go to start learning about the APIs that support these features and how to use them.
That question of where to go to learn is what Wendell addresses in his two recent blogs: http://blogs.cisco.com/perspectives/getting-started-in-ciscos-devnet and http://www.sdnskills.com/learn/devnet01/ . He discusses how newbies, network administrators and even experienced developers can get started with learning new network APIs and technologies. He describes how a relatively new learning platform at Cisco, DevNet, has successfully provided a path for people to learn technologies both online and at Cisco Live shows.
Without stealing Wendell’s thunder I’ll just point out that Cisco DevNet is designed to support newbies and experienced developers alike. There are learning labs, sandboxes, community forums, lots of documentation, and of course, APIs for many technologies.
I recommend that you read Wendell’s blogs then come to DevNet to find and learn the technologies that fit your business needs and your passion.
