The announcement reinforces Cisco's ongoing commitment to providing an open and programmable platform that spans the entire network, from the campus to the data center, branch offices, and the edge. By providing an open network, Cisco empowers the 500,000 developers in the DevNet community, its 60,000 partners, and three million network engineers to innovate on the platform.
 
Intent-based networking represents a fundamental shift in how networks are built and managed. By avoiding traditional manual management methods—which involve higher costs and more time—these modern networks interpret business intent or needs and translate them into network policies. These policies are then automatically activated across the entire infrastructure, ensuring that business needs are met as planned.
 
DNA Center platform
Cisco today announced new development tools and open APIs for Cisco DNA Center — the dashboard that manages intent-based networking across campuses, branches, and the edge. DNA Center transforms the network from a collection of multiple hardware devices into a single system. With the availability of end-to-end open APIs, Cisco now enables developers to easily program this system, leveraging the full visibility and analytics capabilities the network provides.
 
With a comprehensive catalog of APIs, DNA Center helps IT departments protect and inform their businesses like never before:
 
• Bringing network intelligence to business operations: DNA Center enables developers to program the network as a single system using intent-based APIs. Now, developers can easily create a new generation of 'network-aware' applications, and partners can integrate the network into business processes.
• Optimizing IT processes: DNA Center allows network administrators to exchange information to automate processes across IT systems using software adapters. Now, the IT department can dedicate more resources to innovation and less to maintenance or operations.
• Managing multi-vendor networks: DNA Center provides developers and partners with the flexibility to support multi-vendor networks through a Software Development Kit (SDK). This allows organizations to simplify the complexity imposed by heterogeneous networks and manage them consistently as a single system.
 
Cisco introduces three new initiatives for developers:
• The DevNet Ecosystem Exchange helps you find and share applications or solutions built for Cisco platforms. Business leaders and developers can use this online portal to discover partner-designed solutions for any Cisco platform or product. It currently contains more than 1,300 solutions.
DevNet Code Exchange provides developers with a central hub for accessing and sharing software to rapidly build next-generation applications and integrate workflows. A comprehensive list of sample code, adapters, tools, and SDKs, compiled by Cisco and the DevNet community, is available on GitHub. Code Exchange spans Cisco's entire portfolio and is organized by Cisco product areas and platforms.
• DevNet DNA Developer Center is a comprehensive repository to help developers build applications and perform integrations on the DNA Center platform. It provides all the resources, capabilities, use cases, and training materials a developer would need.
 
Availability, services and support
• The new DNA Center capabilities are expected to be available this summer. Customers can purchase them from Cisco and its partners through existing subscription offerings.
• DevNet Ecosystem Exchange, Code Exchange and DNA Developer Center are now available.
• Cisco and its partners offer a comprehensive range of services that covers the entire lifecycle to help organizations optimize their evolution toward true intent-based networks.

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