It's a great day when not just one but two of the innovations in theCisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA)are chosen as the winners of theBest of Interop Award. The judges consist of 20 of the most influential IT practitioners, analystsandprofessionals who base their decisions on the technologies that are having "the most significant technical impact on their segment and are helping to move business technology forward."

When we announcedCisco DNAin early March, I was confident we were not only moving business technology forward but changing the DNA of enterprise networking altogether. Cisco DNA is an open, extensible and software driven architecture that enables new digital applications for digital business. It simplifies network operations with automation and orchestration and enables security of the enterprise with the network as a security control point for both sensing and enforcement.

Cisco DNA washeraldedby press and analysts as a game changer when it was announced and winning theBest ofInterop award(s) is further validation of our strategy and the ability of Cisco DNA to deliver on real business outcomes for faster innovation, greater productivity and lower costs.

In the area of virtualization, there's been lots of discussion about Network Functions Virtualization for the service provider, but withCisco Enterprise NFVenterprises now have a way of taking advantage of NFVto deliver branch service virtualization - really, a software branch.

View this post on Instagram

Best of #Interop winner for#Networking, Enterprise#NFV #bestofinterop#ciscoenterprise

A post shared by Cisco Networking (@cisconetworks) on May 5, 2016 at 8:15am PDT

With the Enterprise NFV, we are providing an end-to-end solution including the NFV infrastructure and orchestration layer to make it simple and easy to automate delivery of network services out at the branch. As the first NFV solution for the enterprise, Cisco is leading our customers in the journey to a more agile and flexible digital branch.

Cisco APIC-EMis the core automation platform behind Cisco DNA and it's in the hands of thousands of customers with hundreds of deployments. New applications bundled in APIC-EM include base-automation services, plug and play, cloud-delivered provisioning devices and IWAN and Easy QoS new policy-based applications, which means you do not have to be a programmer to take advantage of automation for advanced feature configuration in your enterprise network

AndFlexible Radio Assignmentis an early example of how Cisco is automating the network by building in intelligence to understand changes and then adapting to meet those changes on-demand. For example if a flash crowd or gathering occurs in a given footprint, such as a common area, the access points will identify the increase in wireless demand and can automatically change to boost capacity in that area. This delivers a better experience and minimizes the impact of device density. Flexible Radio Assignment is available onCisco Aironet2800 and 3800Access Points.

In addition to the Cisco DNA winners, the Cisco FirePower next-generation firewall took the prize in the Security category and Cisco Nexus Fabric Manager won top billing in the Data Center category.

I want to congratulate the engineering and marketing teams who have brought these incredible innovations to life and invite you to take a closer look.