Tim: 0:12

Hey everybody and welcome to an episode of the Cables to Clouds Fortnightly News. Uh this one's gonna be a little bit different, a little bit special. We noticed kind of pulled and audible. Uh we noticed that the published date for this uh episode was uh the 31st. So we decided that we'll actually make this news episode kind of a recap and maybe just a little bit of you know reflections and predictions on next year. So let's just uh let's just you know roll right into what that looks like. That sounds good? A year in review, so to say. Yep. A year in review and then a year in preview, I guess. We'll we'll we'll see what uh we can sus out for next year. All right. So okay, so let's just go over.

Chris: 1:00

Yes, everything that's gonna happen next year.

Tim: 1:03

Yeah, I'll I'll use my uh my tarot cards or or something. I don't know. Chicken bones, I'm not sure. I haven't decided.

unknown: 1:10

All right.

Tim: 1:12

Uh yeah, maybe. All right, so alright, so let's just talk about the past year, right? And it's been a hell of a year, and it's hard to believe that it's finally over. Um yeah, we'll see what happens in 2026. Anyway, so let's talk about for the show. So uh had some milestones for ourselves and for the show. Um so Chris, you moved over from Avatrix to Fortnet, like around mid-year, right? And uh you definitely uh got to uh drink from the fire hose you were you were mentioning. And uh I uh Tim, of course, was uh I went over to Cisco in September from Aviatrix. And uh the yeah, I fire hose and all that. It's been it's been interesting. Uh interestingly enough, even though I'm a technical marketing engineer with the uh you know secure WAN uh business unit at Cisco, I you know, as soon as I got there, they were basically like, okay, you're the cloud guy. So I guess I get to do both.

Chris: 2:10

Um anyway. I didn't realize it's been since September. That's seems like it's so long, but it's uh this year, dude.

Tim: 2:18

This year's dragged on forever. This year this year's been like three years long.

Chris: 2:22

Yeah, I think I hit my six month mark at the new gig, and I was just like, holy shit, like that flew by, dude.

Tim: 2:29

Yeah, yeah, it's funny how that works, right? Like, depending on what it, and that's always how it is, uh time flies and you're having fun and all of that, right? But uh I swear this this year in general has felt like it's been three years long. But yeah, then you'll then you'll look at the calendar and you'll be like, oh my crap, you know, shit, it's already been six months since you've been at your new job. So anyway. Um, so then yeah, so we're both we're both in new places. Uh the podcast uh is doing well. We um rolled it back just because we're both in new jobs and and have a lot more responsibilities. We went from weekly to fortnightly episodes. Luckily, it hasn't impacted you guys. Are still, you know, my our audience is still uh tuning in to hear us complain about everything, probably. So I we do appreciate that very much so. And we do appreciate it, and thank you for sticking with us. Um, and on a personal note for Chris and I, uh our and and for our friend Steve, who has been on the podcasts this year, did a news episode with us a few episodes ago, uh, Steve McNutt, and we had a the AWS Advanced Networking Certification Guide with Packed Publishing just came out this year and uh is doing quite well as well. And we've got really good reviews for it and all that good stuff. So honestly, we're just happy that it to be done with it and that people found value in it. So that was really, really good for us.

Chris: 3:49

Yeah. It's funny you say just came out. Didn't that come out in January? Wasn't it the beginning of the year?

Tim: 3:54

Well, sorry, I was saying I think just came out this year. It came out this year. Sorry, yeah.

Chris: 4:00

It felt like we were writing it for 20 years and then it came out this year. So yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah.

Tim: 4:04

We uh yeah, exactly. So we we put it out, it's it's doing quite well. Like I said, uh I just I just love how we keep randomly getting tagged by people who picked it up and are just like, this is really kick-ass book. We love it, you know. So that's that's always helpful.

Chris: 4:18

Yeah, the feedback just I mean, just the feedback on like LinkedIn posts alone is has made it worth it. Um it's very, very kind words, and um, you know, hopefully more people check it out. Hopefully the thing is I don't I don't necessarily see that specific certification be coming in high demand anytime soon. Um I think we all knew that going into it, which is probably why. Um, but you know, if you if you are going for that certification, please check out the book. Please give us feedback. Um we'd love to hear um back on that. And and hopefully don't they don't change the test anytime soon, because I don't want to have to we don't want to have to rewrite it anytime soon either.

Tim: 4:54

No doubt, no doubt. All right. Uh all right, so let's talk about the year in review itself. A lot of stuff happened this year, which obviously just a lot of stuff, right? And honestly, before we uh hit the record button, we were going through the list and it was like, man, we're gonna talk about like four things. There was like nine or ten things on the list, and we were like, man, we can't this this this episode will take four hours to record if we try to go through this list. So we're just gonna hit the high notes. Um one thing that happened in the 2025, which to be fair, it happens every year, but we saw some some big moves this year uh were a lot of uh mergers and acquisitions, or really honestly, really just more acquisitions. I don't think we saw really anything in in the true merger arena, right? So uh Arista, yeah, no Arista Ball A type of thing. Yeah, exactly. No M all A. Exactly. Little little M big fucking A.

Chris: 5:50

There you go, there you go.

Tim: 5:52

So Arista acquired Velocloud from Broadcom this year. Um that I don't I don't remember having that one on my bingo card. That was a surprise. Uh, but uh it kind of makes sense because Broadcom operating as a PE is just gonna sell uh what it considers to be not its core business. So it kind of does make sense on in hindsight. Um but yeah, so one thing I haven't noticed and I haven't you know heard anything about in the communities that I'm part of is what that looks like. Like I don't know anybody using the Arista Velo Cloud solution, so I'm very curious to see if you if anybody's out there using it. How you know, were you using it before? Has anything changed with support structure? Like I'd I would just love to know like is this working out for Arista?

Chris: 6:33

Yeah, I mean I think you know, Tim, you and I are probably in a not a unique scenario, but we are in a scenario where we are like operating with vendors that are in this SD WAN market as well, right? So, you know, I I I do see um VeloCloud coming up from a competitive standpoint on on a regular basis, kind of being in sales. Um it seems that there is um, you know, the I'd say the the people that I see that are using VeloCloud today, they're relatively satisfied with the product. Um they they like the way it operates and you know have have a good amount of flexibility, but I think there's a lot of uncertainty as to where that's gonna go with Arista. And um, you know, I mean some people have certain connotations with Arista, you know, what whether they're true or false, the you know, they they they are there. Same people have the same things with with with the vendor I work for, the vendor you work for, right? That's just kind of the the rules of the game that we play, right? Um, so I think there's a lot of uncertainty as to what's actually gonna happen with it. Um I think there was already a decent amount of uncertainty with it going to Broadcom in the first place because Broadcom treats uh very much treats its product like uh cattle and not pets. Uh so um, you know, I think people were uncertain at how how uh how that was gonna strike. Um but you know it's um the thing is I that could be a really good spot for Arista. Um, you know, and and you know, I think we mentioned it on the show when we covered this. It's like I'd like to see them take it somewhere, um, because I don't think they had uh concrete SD WAN product before that. But um yeah, if you're out there using it, if you're if you're talking to Arista about this, I'd love to hear feedback about that um and and see how things are going.

Tim: 8:17

Yeah, for sure. Uh let's see. And then so we heard about the HPE G uh HPE buying Juniper last year, but there was a big uh was it oh god, it wasn't DOJ. Who was it or was it DOJ? Somebody was holding it up uh during the bite before the it was DOJ, yeah, yeah. So we weren't sure. We we we didn't know which way it was gonna go when we reported on this on the news earlier this year, back in what February. And uh the DOG had sued to block this merger saying that basically it would cause a monopoly or or something too close to a monopoly, which is kind of interesting. But it did finally get regulatory approval to move forward. So not done, but it's approved. There's no other blockers in the way. So we are gonna see, you know, HPE buy Juniper and then figure out, then we'll finally get answers to all the things that we wanted to know back in February about what's gonna happen with MIST, how they're gonna redo the portfolio, like small business, medium business, enterprise, what that's gonna look like. So still, still jury's still out. Don't have an answer on what that prediction looks like yet. Uh, very curious to see. So, and then uh yeah, go ahead.

Chris: 9:23

I was gonna that was that was an odd one because I feel like that was the one where you know D the DOJ stepped in, was like, oh, well, this can't happen, this is a monopoly. And I think that was the acquisition that we all saw happening, be like, that this actually isn't a monopoly. These are two kind of uh choice players where there's obvious uh you know other parties in that camp as well. We don't had you know that one seemed like not that much of a conflict of interest uh in that scenario. Um and then they had to sell they had to sell off the you know kind of the theme of it. No, it's the it was the well the day the well there's that, but then HP had to sell off their instant on. Is it instant on something called? The other product line that they managed, but like that's right, everyone seemed like that seemed like such a win for them in that scenario. I don't I don't see really what that affected um uh piece there, yeah. Um I would say just it but since we talked briefly about Broadcom and VMware, um uh if look if you're if you're still tuning into this episode and you want your daily dose of uh not daily dose, your monthly dose of uh tech news, there was an there's an article I will put in the show notes or in the article in the or the document in the show notes. Um leave it to Europe to do this, but I've seen an article come out uh just uh a couple weeks ago where the um an organization in the European Union is trying to get them to roll back the uh acquisition of VMware.

Tim: 10:47

Good luck on that one.

Chris: 10:50

Uh so there's uh you know, there's always there's there's so much uh shit going on right now with all this. Um, but that one I thought that was that was very funny. If they just rolled it back in one particular geographic part of the world, that would be quite funny.

Tim: 11:05

Well, the other thing is um, and it was something I had found uh when I was looking into like all our predictions and kind of what predictions, how they turned out, that were we right, wrong, or completely off base on some of these. And uh the Broadcom one, we were like, you know, this is gonna be a a disaster for Broadcom. People are gonna eat their lunch. Uh, but you know what didn't happen is actually a lot of people didn't actually end up migrating immediately away from Broadcom. And I think we did say at the time, like what would probably happen is that people are gonna have to eat essentially eat shit for at least a year and have to do a short-term renewal and just just eat the cost while they try to figure out what to do. So I think I think we haven't seen the end of that story yet. I think it's uh, you know, the tail on this cat is long. And uh, even though the Broadcom stock is up quite a bit, I do think as it unwinds as people, you know, go go elsewhere, when you know they won't we'll see the renewals drop off, probably.

Chris: 12:01

Yeah, it's it's an interesting one because it's like I think we originally thought, you know, oh, is this what is gonna move people to um you know, kind of refactor their applications and get it something on more cloud native and and move it over, um, et cetera. But you know, there's already there's been kind of a pullback from the CSPs on what level of support they'll provide for the VMware solutions that they offer in the cloud, right? So um, you know, due to the Broadcom acquisition, I'm sure. Um and that I don't I don't know if we saw that happen because now we're talking about, you know, certain companies have gotten to specific sizes where they're talking about moving things on-prem, you know, either either either moving it to on-prem for the first time or or repatriating it. Um, but I wonder is like what is that gonna look like? Is that gonna be Kubernetes-based? Like, do they move it to the cloud just to learn how to get it on Kubernetes and then port it over to uh being on-prem? Although we've we've also talked about that on the show about how the portability of Kubernetes is not as easy as everyone makes it sound um at the end of the day. But yeah, that's uh that's that's one I'm I'm took still kind of scratching my head over. I'm not sure where that's gonna go.

Tim: 13:09

Yeah, for sure. Uh and then you know, Cisco closed the acquisition of iSovalent, which we had talked about for a long time when it was first announced. We were like, holy crap, what a great move by Cisco. Um, what we've seen since then is is like the the HyperShield product, which is honestly very still pretty nebulous. Like it, it's you know, you can go look at the product sheet. It's the idea is like you know, AI powered data secure, you know, data plane security. It's all based on eBPF, and they've started rolling eBPF into like Cisco's uh Nexus uh smart switches, DPUs, and and whatnot, and then HyperShield is kind of like the overall orchestrator for it. It's still very much in the infancy, though. So I I would expect to see more of this, but yeah, definitely you know, Cilium, Iceovalent, EBPF, all of it in more s in more Cisco products. But I mean here's the thing Cisco is not a quick company to do this stuff. I'm just happy it's happening, like that they made an acquisition and they're actually gonna roll in the technology to the the product portfolio.

Chris: 14:13

So yeah, I mean to like I guess to kind of open that up a bit, that they finished the acquisition of ISovalin last year, right? So that was like uh sometime in 2024, I think mid-2024, something like that. Yeah. Um I I think I think probably reflection on this year is that I'm surprised we didn't see more out of that. We didn't see more product offerings, you know, kind of with that under the hood. Um, you know, we did see a few, you know, obviously HyperShield was kind of quick out of the gate with that, and that seems like that's kind of um the current state of of where they're putting that technology into. Um, but I mean to be fair, I think the AI shift kind of put the kiosh on that for a little while. Everybody's thing, yeah. Yeah, right. It's like yeah, it had to be terrible to be a product manager whenever all that shit was like boiling down on what you actually had to deliver. Um, I feel for those people.

Tim: 15:05

I'm I'm sure everybody's uh everybody's whatever feature list like changed overnight, right? Yep, yep, 100%.

Chris: 15:12

Um and we can say that because we were at a company that did this on a regular basis.

Tim: 15:17

Exactly.

Chris: 15:19

But uh yeah, so that's I I am surprised we didn't see more from that, but you know, um all things considered, I think we understand why.

Tim: 15:27

Yeah, for sure. Uh okay, so let's let's move on to another one of the big ones. This one was a dark, this one was a dark horse that of course, because reInvent only just happened, just came out. Uh, and this one is the AWS and Google Crowd clock uh Google Cloud Cross link. Say that fast 500 times. Um, you know, we just talked about this, so I'm not gonna belabor the point, but you know, how long, how many times did we say that CSPs are not going to go out of their way to connect you to make it easy for you to connect to other CSPs? I think what I I mean we're clearly we're we're eating crow on that a little bit, even though you know Azure and Oracle have had something like this already, but the Azure Oracle one thing always felt very, very purposeful. Like the reason they did this was so that Oracle or so that uh uh Azure could leverage you know Oracle Compute or for like Oracle DB. Like there was a very specific purpose to connecting Oracle and Azure together. This is very much just uh, hey, you got stuff in Google, you got stuff in AWS, you want them to talk? Bam, like just get connected. And that's a different shift. Like I think that's a a big shift in multi-cloud networking. And I also think that uh yeah, there's a lot of multi-cloud networking and middle mile vendors out there that are got that are probably on, I wouldn't say on the back foot necessarily, but are just are gonna have to figure out like where do they fit into this. Now, so I think we talk and again we just talked about this, right? So the middle mile, I think, has got not a lot to worry about because a lot of times they own the facilities or you know, the meet me points where this is gonna happen. So they can make it easy. They could just, you know, for the they're they're they're customer changes, but not the technology for them, right? So I don't know.

Chris: 17:08

Yeah. And I think we we might have talked about this a little bit, but we've we've been kind of talking to some folks as well that um have been talking to the CSPs about this and and things like that. And it sounds like there's more to come here. Um, I think we'll probably end up seeing kind of a full full range of this multi-cloud connectivity being offered from the big four. Um, so kind of any combination of you know, AWS, Azure, GCP, and Oracle, I imagine you could probably build direct connectivity between all those. We just need to take time to build out the interconnections and things like that and build the APIs on top of it. Um the one thing that I was skeptical about um was how they're gonna make it cost effective, right? If if we're paying per gigabyte, and you know, then then if you're doing paying both sides. Yeah, you're paying both sides of it, right? Um, but it sounds like that they are opting potentially for a model where you pay just based on the gigabit uh or sorry, the uh throughput of the pipe, right? So kind of like you would get from a normal teltro when you buy a circuit.

Tim: 18:10

Then you don't care, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Chris: 18:12

Um so that is that could make this very, very interesting. Um maybe that whole economies of scale thing is actually happening, but I I don't I don't think so.

Tim: 18:22

I just had a I just had a crazy thought based on what you were talking about. Like, how far are we from going from like, hey, here's AWS and Google, we're gonna do a cross-cloud link and we're gonna pre-provision this. How far are we from that, from like a CSP like IXP, like a internet exchange point type of setup where literally they just feed their you know their private circuits into an XP uh exchange point and just use automation to let customers just connect any cloud to any cloud. I think that would be the that'd be amazing, right? Like if they could do that. And I'd say if they could do that, they could do that. Like they could they could do that. It's just a matter of of working out between the companies what does that look like, right? The the I an IXP. We would call it a CXP.

Chris: 19:06

Yeah, but you kind of do it already, right? But it's you just have a a middleman in the middle, like you know, like a megaport or an equinix or something like that, right? Which is which they have all their stuff built on APIs, but yeah, like uh to your point, if it's all under it can't be a single umbrella because it's you know technically at least two umbrellas because there's two parties involved. But yeah, you could um you know that could be kind of a disruptor there for sure.

Tim: 19:28

I mean I mean it wouldn't have to be just AWS and Google. I mean I'm talking about like a true CXP where you've got you know oracles in there, like all of them, right?

Chris: 19:35

And you literally whoever any classes means you fit the standard of creativity. Right, yeah.

Tim: 19:42

Yeah, whoever runs the CXP just manages the the connectivity piece of it, and there you go. That's how they make their money, right? So, yeah, that'd be a really interesting way for this model to move forward. Uh let's see what where that goes in 2026. All right, and then uh we have to talk about. AI because it's Tuesday, so we have to talk about AI. So uh that and God knows it's been the top of everybody's bucket for the whole damn year. This is like the year of AI. 2026 is gonna be the year of more AI, and also, you know, the sun burns out or something. Who knows? Um, so ever everybody's just tired of talking about AI, honestly. We're not gonna spend a lot of time here. But from a recap perspective, we've talked about this so many times this year. Uh, we've had many episodes that focus on something about AI, many, many news episodes. And generally the idea is just like from a networking perspective, what did AI do for us in 2025? And I think the answer right now is okay, it's like we can still do network automation, but now with a chat bot. Like I don't feel like, or actually, I mean, so we had Duan uh Lightfoot back in like God, what, like March, right? Like after Autocon. Something like that, yeah. And the stuff he was showing off is really, really cool. Like he I still think that was one of my favorite episodes this year, actually. So um, it's not like nothing happened, right? But I I will say that it exists, but I haven't seen it productized or formatted in a way that has made it like consumable for a person that doesn't know what they're doing yet, or like a network yet.

Chris: 21:22

Like to your point, like if we talk about, I guess, the concept of things being agenc or you know, using an MCP, all that stuff is out there for those that want to build it, right? Right. So you can easily go out and find material to do that. But I mean, we're at the like it's it's not nearly at the enterprise scale that we thought it would be, probably. Reliability or security or yeah. Security is probably the biggest gaping kind of uh oversight in a lot of these things. But I mean, security always comes in later, right? It's it's never kind of that that's not the the enabler. That's not the things that you know security isn't actually the thing that you know uh reinforces agility and and being able to iterate on a regular basis because there's you know there's there's uh checkpoints and things like that you need to go through, right? But it's um I don't know. I think that but that's the thing I thought for the reason why it hasn't grown probably significantly, um, because that's that type of stuff which is um absolute requirements for a lot of you know the organizations that we work with. It's it's just not there yet, right?

Tim: 22:26

Yeah, I'm curious to see if we'll see a chicken or an egg first on that one. Like are they gonna develop? I mean, we so we had uh we had Josh uh on you know talking about like unseen security and like AI security for AI, but like I want to see more about securing AI.

Chris: 22:44

But it will be up to the city. Is that right? So did we not? Oh, we didn't publish something yet. Sorry.

Tim: 22:47

It's not that never mind. I said nothing. Oh my gosh, sorry. I I I didn't realize that was in our backlog. Apologies. Oh, it's totally fine.

Chris: 22:58

That's just that's an upcoming episode. So if it's a good idea, it's an upcoming episode. We're talking about a few weeks.

Tim: 23:02

We'll be talking about security with AI, but like really securing AI is still a thing like MCP, like what is the security? Like agentic AI is just terrifyingly insecure, right? It's literally uh an agent going and doing stuff on your behalf, godlike credentials in most cases, or something, or the you know, security. Anyway. Um yeah, anyway. We're uh we're gonna have to see. I I think that's the biggest problem to solve before you can see enterprises truly adopt it. Because otherwise it's just oh we just saw actually I just saw a uh today Sam Altman from OpenAI just posted something on X talking about how agentic AI is like a serious security risk. But in his case, he's actually talking about um it becoming like script kitty fodder, basically, like it becoming an attacker, it it finding vulnerabilities and stuff. I'm more of the I I come at it from the opposite way, and I say like, you know, your agent to do its job often has like way too much access to things and tools and whatnot.

Chris: 24:06

So we talked about the we talked about this fucking at length when we were talking about it just uh just in terms of the LLM, right? And we were talking about like you know, the the guardrails are there, they exist, and that's great, but eventually those guardrails will get taken off. Like people will find a way to take them off. The same thing will happen with agents, right? And then these you we're talking about feeding your entire code base into these things, right? Um, and yeah, the like but I think part of what Altman was saying is like, oh well, if you have access to the entire code, it's easy to kind of comb through and find the vulnerabilities, right? And then exploit them. Um, which is like, yeah, well, fucking duh, man. Yeah, like the that's that's kind of been the problem this whole time. Um so it's yeah, I mean, I guess it's good to hear him talking about it, but like it's like I mean, he's not asking people not to use it. It's also the same the same guy that was like declaring a code red just a few weeks ago because he's like, oh my gosh, like people are saying the new Gemini is good and it's just as good as Chat GPT. It was like, well, uh, how are you surprised that the competition was able to like do something? Like, like I know your your company is purely worth trillions of dollars based on the fact that there's no competitors, um, but you've gotta, you know, that that just seems like the inevitable. I don't know how he got to a code red situation with that one, but you know, here we are.

Tim: 25:28

Yeah, I mean, well, also considering that Gemini's been in the news since for over a year now, and so has uh uh Claude, you know, Anthropic. And like don't pretend like you don't have you know, this shit's not already happening, right? Exactly. I actually like Claude over Chat GPT for many things, and a lot of people do, right? A lot of people realize that certain models are just better at certain things, right? So yeah, if you're yeah, if your whole business is built on we're the best game in town because there isn't another game in town, then yeah, I I guess you get a code red when anybody comes out with a competing product. Yeah, right. So anyway, speaking of uh speaking of the insane amount of money tied up in AI, uh, one of the other things, uh uh a trend we saw that we'd really like to stop seeing in 2025 was an insane amount of tech layoffs. Like the entire tech industry is just burning down to feed the Wall Street, to feed Wall Street's requirements that the line, the stock line keep going up, right? So, you know, Microsoft, every I mean, uh everybody. Uh uh uh AWS, uh God, I'm just thinking of a company that didn't do a bunch of layoffs this year. Good hard. It's harder to find the ones that didn't. You know? And you know, they and it's and and in many cases it was quote unquote to fund cap uh AI capital investment. So and and I think we remarked about this as well. A lot of times it was just to get immediate liquidity because budgets are tied and you can't move money around, and the easiest way to move money is to just free it up by getting rid of people because that's the one you can do immediately for whatever reason. Um, but yeah, no, it's it's absolutely insane. And you know, a lot of the what was it? I'm trying to remember where I was talking about this. Uh, maybe it was on Discord or something, but we were talking about how and this is this has always been the case. The C-suite has always been CYA'd by as long as I do what Gartner says, and as long as I do what Wall Street says, I'm good. Like I'm gonna be fine, nobody's gonna fire me, and everybody's gonna say I made the right choice. And no matter how it all works out, I'll get my golden parachute and I'll be on my you know, whatever. And now I know that sounds very uh cynical, but dude, I mean, spade is a spade. Like, I don't know what else to say. I don't know else to say that one.

Chris: 27:46

Yeah, I mean, we're like to be fair, to be completely fair, we've been saying this the market has been bad for a while now, right? Yeah, like I'm sure if there's you know one of those line graphs kind of relating the state of the job market to, you know, the kind of release and advancements in artificial intelligence, it's probably a pretty clear overlap on those two things. Um, but like it's weird because there's a lot of AI hype out in the market, obviously, right? There's a lot of people talking about it on LinkedIn, just like I don't know whether or not they're generally excited about it, or sorry, I should say genuinely excited about it, or if it's the fight to stay relevant. Um but I feel like anytime you want to bring it up, like, oh, this is this thing is taking jobs, people are like, oh, you're just you're just poo-pooing on AI and you don't want to see this advance. But like you, it's real it's becoming really hard to defend that point, right? Because like the the state the state of things are is pretty shit right now, and it's only gonna get worse. And you know, we've been talking about we talked about this on the show a lot this year, is what happens when the bottom rungs of these ladders are gone, right? And there's no new people entering this market. Um like that is that's starting to happen. Um it's it's it's a very small portion of it being taken right now, um, in the grand scope of things, but like, dude, like this I think 2026 people are gonna get really, really opposed to this, like much aggressive much more aggressive than they were this year.

Tim: 29:11

Or the entire bubble collapses, but I still I don't I think we've we still probably have at least one more year of of extracting.

Chris: 29:17

Yeah, I was gonna say that's probably 2027's problem.

Tim: 29:20

That's a 2027 problem. Uh yeah, no, I agree. In 2026, we're definitely gonna see this. Honestly, what we'll see is acceleration. We it'll just go faster somehow. Somehow they'll make the the machine burn people faster. I don't know. So uh that's my prediction for 2026. It's gonna suck for until it's gonna suck until hopefully not literally burn them.

Chris: 29:42

Well, that is a possibility. That's the human resources. Terminator is uh a true story.

Tim: 29:50

Terminator was a documentary, it was filmed in real time. Oh boy. Anyway, um, okay, so with that happy note, uh let's move on. So actually, no, this is actually good. Good. Let's talk a little bit about then you know what we got right what we didn't, and then just like what do we think is happening next year. So, you know, things that we got kind of got right. Um we we predicted the AI, we the A the AI would continue to be insane and and they would pour trillions more dollars into it and a lot of people get laid off. That was not a hard one to guess, to be fair.

Chris: 30:25

You can thank us later for our expert uh expert expectations on that one.

Tim: 30:30

Yeah, obviously we um we weren't sure about multi-cloud networking market validation. Obviously, you know, both of us had our had our doubts uh about it, you know. We we are where we are. Uh and I do believe that multi-cloud networking as a market continues to not be a market. Um, you know, especially if the CSPs are truly gonna finally, you know, I don't know if it's that there's money to be made or there's just been so much demand from the customers to give them something with the stamp and see a little CSP approval on it, you know, whatever that looks like, right? Supportable, however you want to call it. Uh I just I do think that uh yeah, a a point solution, a niche solution for multi-cloud networking is gonna be harder to sell to people as the CSPs are shoring up their networking. So yeah.

Chris: 31:24

I mean, this is this is kind of always the risk when you're talking about something as a service, right? You you're basically playing on someone else's home court every time, right? And like they they can make a change that just drastically impacts the way that you run your business, right? So, like, um, you know, the the thing about cloud is well it's great and you know it allows people to be you know very quick and and spin things up, spin things down, blah blah blah, uh adjust things um uh based on load, etc. That comes at a cost of you not owning anything, right? Nothing is truly yours, right? And even if you're a company that has built your foundation on uh you know that foundation that they have, right, then then they can make one change and now you're completely obsolete or your your um you know your value prop is is immediately lessened by quite a bit, right? Um so I think that's just kind of the state of where things are headed. I think we didn't see it coming because we didn't think that they would want to work together, but um, I think maybe I wonder if the AI shift has had an impact on this, to be honest with you.

Tim: 32:30

Uh oh yeah, no question. I think I think that is something we could not have foreseen is is that that insanity. Um but yeah, man, like uh and and and to be fair, we've said, you know, one of the predictions I think I made much earlier this year was that like if it ever became profitable in some way for CSPs to handle networking, that we would see like vast innovations in the realm of networking. It just wasn't profitable before now, essentially. And maybe, and it could be like you just pointed out, Chris, it could be that it's not that the networking itself is valuable, right? It's the outcome realization of being able to connect AI shit together. So that I could not I don't think either of us could have foreseen that one a year ago or whenever it was when we started talking about this stuff.

Chris: 33:16

So I I think probably the the hardest thing about making that kind of stuff happen was getting getting the right people to from each side of the fence to sit down at the table. That was probably it, right? That was probably the hardest part, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like the the technology piece is not overly hard. It's very basic networking. I would imagine that there's, you know, some kind of um very skilled networkers that are using things like that and probably think like, oh, where's this? Where's this feature? Where's that feature? Where's my you know, kind of uh very intricate routing that I want to run, things like that. That's probably not even there. Um, but uh they're they're probably looking a little bit further on, like, hey, if we make this easier to connect the clouds together, you know, if and when uh our cloud launches this certain product or this uh you know AI integration, whatever that is better than the competitor, we it'll be so much easier for them to just move shit over, right? Because they're gonna be. Oh, and for them to consume, yeah. Exactly. So it's it's all about what what you're going to do with that network at the end of the day, right?

Tim: 34:15

Yeah, totally, totally agree. And from that perspective, that's the I think that is the money enabler that we were thinking of. Not just, hey, networking is now worth money, right? Because networking is water and power, it's infrastructure, networking itself will never be worth money on its own. It's what it enables, it always has been. So yes, now there's so now there's a good reason, a a valuable money-driving reason to connect these things together. Let's make it so that we can connect these uh things together easily, right? So totally agree. Yep. 100%. All right, so predictions 2026. We've talked a little bit about some of the things we think are gonna happen. Anything we haven't talked about yet that you think is coming in 2026, giant meteor 2026?

Chris: 34:59

Hopefully giant meteor, but I don't know if we can uh we can plant our flag in that one just yet. Um yeah, I don't know, man. It's really hard. Like the with the current state of things, it's hard to make predictions about so hard. That it's uh I'll be honest, it's hard to make predictions that don't sound negative. And I don't want to be a negative person.

Tim: 35:18

Well, I mean, look to be fair, look at where we're at, man. I don't know about you, but yeah, things are things are not well. Uh so yeah, I don't want to be doom and gloom for the next year, but I truly do believe that 2026 is going to be trying. I I I do think it's gonna be trying. So my advice to you out there is whatever you can save, whatever you can scrimp, whatever you can, you know, hold, try to hold, try to try to be ready, try to keep your, you know, your resumes up to date, try to keep your skills sharp, sharpen the saw, as uh Covey would say. Um, you know, just do what you can because a lot of things are probably are you don't nobody none of us are truly in control of anything, but it's very much in the human human nature to try to control as much as we can control. So do what do what you can.

Chris: 36:08

I think on that point, another thing that we can control, and and I think one thing that we've seen happen every year is that exceed expectations through and through. Yeah, right. Um, there's always people out there that are willing to help. Whether whether or not you're you know 25, 30 years into your you know, tech career or you're you know just starting, right? There's always people to help. Like talk to people on LinkedIn, talk to people in social circles on Discord, etc. Whatever. Just like be be connected with people and and things will more often go your way than not, I think.

Tim: 36:39

Now that's really good. Definitely. I I for I meant to say it and I forgot it. So per Greg's for pointing out, yeah, network. That is something you have control over. Network with people. This is a networking industry, and I guarantee you that like everybody knows everybody. Everybody's they just don't know they know everybody. Like everybody's like two degrees from everybody else, they just don't know it. So get out there, get involved with communities. Not only will it help you network, which is of course a self-helping thing, but you can then be supportive and be supported by your communities, right? So we all gotta look that is one thing we all have control over, is the ability to look out for each other in 2026. Because I I think it's probably gonna get a little worse before you know we can even see a point where it'll get better. So all right. So that uh this has been the episode. Uh hope it was entertaining. Hopefully, you you none of you have uh entertained any particularly dark thoughts as we as we've uh counted down this year. But uh yeah, we'll be back in the new year with lots of episodes, uh at least one that I've mentioned uh ahead of time. We've got a lot more common uh special guests and everything. We got the whole thing planned. Well, I'd say a whole thing. We've got we've got a decent amount of stuff planned out, and hopefully everybody will come along with you with us before planned. At least to be fair, I mean I honestly in this economy.

Chris: 38:00

Yeah, right.

Tim: 38:01

So yeah, hopefully everybody comes along with us, and uh we will see you in the new year. Thanks for our great year, guys.