Taming Network Complexity: Nikhil Handigol on the Evolution of Digital Twins and Forward AI

Hey, everyone. Welcome back here to Text Drug tv. I'm happy to introduce you to our next guest.

His name is Nikhil Al n Nik. Nikhil joins us, I believe, from Santa Clara out in the valley today. Uh, Nikhil, it's great to have you on.

Welcome to Techstrong tv. Hi, Alan. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Pleasure. Now Nikhil is the co-founder and pay attention here, chief AI officer of the company called Forward Networks Hil. First of all, congratulations on fo on founding or co-founding forward networks.

We're going to hear about your role as a Chief AI officer, but I'm sure people out here are asking how did he become a chief ar uh, AI officer. What's his background? What's his journey been like that he's a Chief AI officer.

Tell us. Yeah, happy to. Uh, yeah, so, uh, just quick introduction.

Again, my name is Nick Al. I'm the Chief AI officer and co-founder, uh, at Forward Networks. And very quick background.

Prior to forward, uh, my co-founders and I did our PhDs at, uh, Stanford University, where we built some of the foundational pieces of software defined networking and past that. Mm-hmm. Uh, yeah.

So we, uh, started Power Networks 12 years ago, and, uh, it's been, it's been an amazing journey, uh, for the last 12 years. And as a co-founder, uh, I have had to wear multiple hats, uh, as you would imagine a co-founder would need to do. And, and over, over this long journey of 12 plus years and off late, uh, my role is, uh, is that of a Chief AI officer, as you rightly pointed.

And what that means is I head our AI strategy and execution within forward, and that that comes in, uh, two different flavors. Uh, one is external from a product perspective. I help, uh, I, I am spearheading our agent, TKI capabilities that we are building into the four platform and internally, uh, so that's the other side of, uh, my job, which is, uh, internally I am also, uh, being an evangelist and spearheading the adoption of AI within forward networks as an organization.

Excellent. So another overnight sensation 12 years later, huh? You could say that.

Yeah. Just, just 12 years. Absolutely.

Um, so Nikhil, I've had, you know, the joy of co-founding a few companies myself over the years, and I know, you know, the commitment and you talk about wearing multiple hats and how roles evolve over the years. 12 years ago, did you envision that you would need a Chief AI officer right, doing software defined networking? Uh, to be honest, no.

I think, I think back in the day, AI was not as mainstream as, uh, it's today, right? Like, so today, like it looks, looks like a completely different world these days. Uh, yeah.

Back in the day, yeah. Uh, would've known, well, 12 years ago when we talked about ai, we, we were probably talking more about machine learning, pattern recognition, those kinds of things. And those were already real, quite frankly, 12 years ago.

Right. We had companies doing that, just coincidentally, I think it was 12 years ago that I started Techstrong Me Media ops, the corporate name, uh, 2014, right? So it's 12 March will be 12 years.

Um, so I, you know, it, it, it was definitely out there. Let, let's, let's build our way up to Chief ai Officer. Forward Network starts as an SDN company, right?

And that was all the rage, right? It's, I talk to us about this journey that forward, and you, as part of it has been on from software defined networking 12 years ago to where we are today with the announcement of forward ai. Yeah.

Uh, I would love to. Yeah. So, uh, we started forward, uh, 12 years ago, and when we started forward, our mission was to make the world's networks agile, predictable, and secure.

And that mission has not changed in the last 12 years. It's remained exactly the same. And all of this stems from the observation that while networks today have, uh, become more critical than ever, and that criticalities only increasing over time, their complexity has surpassed human capacity.

And with the increasing adoption of AI these days, the demand and expectation of our networks is only increasing. And so we, uh, going forward, uh, our networks will need to be more robust, more reliable, more secure, higher performance than ever before. And, and the, the fundamental gap or problem that we had observed then, and has mostly held true to this day as well, is that while our networks have become more critical, while they're becoming more complex than ever before, the way we have operated our networks has largely remained the same.

The, the, the fundamental, uh, weapons tools in our, in our arsenal, they have, they have not changed significantly. We still talk about monitoring, we still talk about observability. We still talk about pings and trace route, like the, the tools that were invented back in the eighties and nineties, uh, that that hasn't been a fundamentally different way to tame the network complexity.

And, and that's the problem we set out to solve. Excellent. Excellent.

So, well, before we go further, let me get some housekeeping outta the way, Nikhil. So people want to get more information on forward networks. What's the best place to send them?

Uh, the best place to go would be, uh, to our website, uh, forward networks com. And, uh, there are multiple ways to engage, uh, with, with the team and the platform. com, you can go request a demo, uh, and, and one of our teammates would be happy to, uh, work with you and get your demo.

There is also something called Forward Quest, which is a self-directed way to get your hands on the forward digital twin platform, which I'll talk about a little bit soon. Uh, yeah, so that would be another way to do it, uh, or that we have our YouTube channel where, uh, we have a lot of videos about the product, about the technology, about the problem. So, uh, that would be another way to get to know Word Forward.

I love it. Good, good. Thanks for providing that.

Let's, let's fast forward to today, right? It, it seems to be all AI all the time, right? And, and, and in some ways, rightfully so, right?

'cause the, the potential for not just disruption, but for progress, for, for fundamentally changing the equation, not just in technology, but our day-to-day lives in jobs and how we accomplish things, you know, where there's smoke, there's fire usually. So I'm not saying AI is gonna do everything that everyone says it might do. I don't know if it'll ever achieve, you know, super intelligence or a a a, uh, a GI, but what it could do right now is pretty darn amazing.

Right. Let's, let's talk about forward AI and how you over at Forward Networks have kind of harnessed this, and, you know, you can't beat 'em, join them, right? And, and, and brought it in to be part of the solution you guys offer.

Yeah, I would love to, uh, just, just a little bit of quick background on where all of this is coming from, right? Uh, I mean, AI has touched pretty much every industry as we not today. And, and, uh, most industries are undergoing a transformational shift.

And networking as an industry is no different. Networking and security. Uh, if you look at, uh, the industry, industry is looking at something called agent corporations.

Uh, this is, this is a world where autonomous and, uh, semi-autonomous agents will perform most of day-to-day network options, uh, again, with wherever appropriate. And, uh, and like, that's, that's the future that, uh, this industry as a whole is envisioning. But if you're talking about agents operating critical infrastructure, like the network, then our po, the composition is that, that those agents need to be built on the right foundation.

And, and, and there are two key pillars as far as we, uh, the way we think, uh, to this foundation. Data and trust agents can be only as good as the data that access to. And if you are, if you expect agents to operate and take actions in, in critical infrastructure like the network, then we better have a way to trust what the agents are doing.

And that's, that's the, that's a quick background of where all of this is coming from. And, uh, we recently announced forward ai, uh, it's, uh, it's a conversational agent system to accelerate operations, but importantly with safety, it's, uh, it's built on the foundation of a mathematically accurate digital twin of the network. So what is forward ai?

It's a conversational interface. So users, our users are network operators, security operators, cloud operators. So users can come in and express their goals or their questions, uh, or the tasks that they intend to perform within the network in natural language and under the hood, uh, it's, uh, there is an AI agent, or it's a system of AI agents.

In fact, it's an AI agent that understands what the user is trying to do, and it reasons based on the knowledge that it has from the mathematically accurate digital twin of the network, and builds a plan in response to that and dynamically executes through that, uh, via a multi-step, uh, workflow. So that's, that's how at a high level power AI works. It's an agent system that is capable of performing these multi-step workflows, uh, somewhat, mostly autonomously, uh, with, with the conversational interface with the user.

Excellent. I love it. Um, you know what I like about it, Nikhil, so many people today are looking at AI and, you know, I don't know whether they have visions of sugar plums or gold dust, but they're like going all in on ai, but, but not building on what came before.

They're just, let's, let's tear that all down and start fresh with AI, or, do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, Absolutely. Where this seems to be more of, Hey, we've been doing this for 12 years.

We, we've, we've seen what our customers want, we've seen what works, what doesn't work, what's thoughtfully brings some AI into the equation where it makes sense to improve the overall, but, but your, your, your mission didn't change. Do you know what I'm saying? The vision didn't change.

The tools have gotten better, and that's great, right? But forward networks, the mission really hasn't changed drastically. It's just, as I said, the tools and, and that I think is isn't, you know, no pun intended, an intelligent use of ai, right?

Um, to, to, you know, holistically, organically, sort of graft it onto what you do, and don't just burn down the forest and plant new trees. Um, wondering, you know, what have you heard from customers on this? Yeah, I I I, I really like what you said, and, and like, I want to just double click on that a little bit.

Go ahead. So we, we didn't start with AI and look for a problem to solve, problem solve, right? And so we've, we've spent more than a decade building the foundational truth, the, the foundation that is needed, uh, to truly understand, truly know what the network is doing, how the network behaves.

And AI is an accelerant on top. And again, uh, as, as you, as you rightly said, uh, Alan, right? So there is, there is, uh, kind of a myth in some circles going around that AI is this magical thing though.

I mean, like, as an, as a concrete example, right? Uh, uh, there are, there is some thinking in some circles that you can just like pull in some data, right? So like pull in some raw data or like, and then slap AI on top, and magic will happen.

And the truth is, that is definitely not the case, definitely not the case when it comes to complex infrastructure like the network where, where the behavior can be extremely complex and the importance of the answers and the outcomes are much, much higher than if you used AI to write an email or, or, or have it pose upon. Uh, like this is, we're talking about critical infrastructure here, and therefore being disciplined and thoughtful about how you build these AI capabilities, these agent capabilities becomes even more important. Uh, I, I, I think I was also Nikhil one good turn deserves another that was also very insightful and, and a good way of looking at it.

Um, hey, you know what, the, the, the time here goes quick. Unfortunately, we, we don't have a lot more, I, I wanna unfortunately, 'cause I'd like to talk to you more about, you know, the, the, the meat of this, but we, people may have questions. How do, how do you know, as you said, you go to the website, people on your team can show 'em demos and everything else.

Um, how else can they interact with forward, right. LinkedIn, any shows you're gonna be at coming up or anything like that? Conferences, Yeah.

Uh, we, we were just, uh, in Europe recently, just last week, uh, at Cisco Live emea. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

And yeah. And, and then, uh, shortly in, in the near future, we'll be at the RSA conference, uh, in, in the Bay Area. Yes.

And, uh, yeah, so I've, if you happen to be there, please stop by. We have No, No, we are, yeah. So Really nice booth there.

So please stop by the four Networks booth and, uh, and we'll be at Cisco live in the us uh, end of May as well. That, that would be in Las Vegas. And yeah, again, we'll have in Vegas, we'll have a, we'll have a strong presence there.

Uh, please do stop by the booth and, uh, engage with the crew. Uh, and we'd be happy to tell you everything about the digital twin technology, about forward ai, uh, about everything else that we are building as well. That sounds like a a, a great thing.

You know, we are gonna be at RSA, we'll be at Broadcast Alley at Moscone West all week streaming live. Wonderful. We'll have your people talk to my people or we'll have your ai talk to my AI and, and we'll, we'll see if we can't set something up to see, see you all there.

Uh, we, we actually are putting on a seminar in Moscone on Monday. I, this is the 10th year of doing it with RSA. Usually it was on DevSecOps, so this year it's on securing AI native dev.

We've got some great speakers as well. So if you are there, we're in Moscone West all week, I'd, I'd love to talk with you. Wonderful.

Cisco Live, I know our sister company, tech Field Day is there doing a tech field day in i in Vegas, I believe, at Cisco Live. Um, again, I'll have my AI talk to your AI about it, but this, it sounds like we're gonna be overlapping some places. Um, I think there might be one other one too here, uh, oh, about a demo request.

You're gonna be doing demos at these conferences and so forth, or We will, we will be doing a lot of demos, uh, at these conferences. We'll have, uh, a, a big team, uh, from forward networks who will, uh, who would love to show you demos of the platform. But again, if you're not at these conferences, you can always go to the website and request for a demo, and one of our team members would be happy to reach out back to you and show you what, uh, the, the technology is, what it can do for you.

Perfect. Nikhil, I appreciate you coming on and telling people a little bit about you, a lot about forward networks, a lot about Forward ai. I wish you a lot of success.

And may the next 12 years be even better than the last 12, and hopefully, we'll maybe we'll see you in either Vegas or San Francisco. Thank you so much, Alan. Uh, it was a pleasure talking to you and, uh, and looking forward to, uh, meeting with you and the team at one of these conferences.

Nikhil Al, co-founder, chief Ai Officer. I forward networks here on Text Drunk tv. We're gonna take a break.

We'll be back.