Cisco expanding its Cloud Business with $1B investment in Cloud Services

By Darshik Jariwala - March, 25th 2014

A little over Three years ago Cisco vowed they not get into the cloud services which would have seen them compete with the likes of Amazon and Google, and other players in the industry who could possibly be their customers. Cisco appears to have some change in those plans now as they have announced they are expecting to invest over $1 Billion in the next Two years in order to expand their cloud business.

With all the companies increasingly adopting the cloud; public, private as well as hybrid, to deliver quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively, Cisco plans to build the world’s largest global Intercloud. The Intercloud would be the “network of clouds”, which Cisco plans to build with a set of partners. Cisco plans to expand the much talked about, Internet of Everything, through its Intercloud. It will be based on the OpenStack platform, supporting all types of cloud; public, private and hybrid. It is designed in a way to allow organizations to move workload across different types of clouds securely and easily while maintaining the network and security policies. Cisco says, “The Cisco global Intercloud is being architected for the Internet of Everything, with a distributed network and security architecture designed for high-value application workloads, real-time analytics, “near infinite” scalability and full compliance with local data sovereignty laws. The first-of-its-kind open Intercloud, which will feature APIs for rapid application development, will deliver a new enterprise-class portfolio of cloud IT services for businesses, service providers and resellers.”

Cisco is already is talks many well known organizations to partner with, to deliver the cloud services. Some of the organizations who either plan to partner with Cisco or endorse Cisco’s initiative include; Australian service provider Telstra, Canadian business communications provider Allstream; European cloud company Canopy; cloud services aggregator, provider and wholesale technology distributor Ingram Micro Inc.; global IT and managed services provider Logicalis Group; global provider of enterprise software platforms for business intelligence, mobile intelligence, and network applications MicroStrategy, Inc.; enterprise data center IT solutions provider OnX Managed Services; information availability services provider SunGard Availability Services; and leading global IT, consulting and outsourcing company Wipro Ltd.

Here’s what some of them have to say about their possible partnership with Cisco in their new offering. Erez Yarkoni, Executive Director Cloud, Global Enterprise and Services for Telstra said,” Our customers will now have access to cloud infrastructure from a global leader, allowing them to select the cloud service to meet their requirements and scale network and cloud resources to deliver service agility, security and performance. Our longstanding relationship with Cisco allows us to offer deeper and broader service capabilities to help our customers manage their critical applications, making the transition to the cloud simpler and more cost effective.”

“As the largest European cloud provider, we are keen to further our portfolio, in particular in SaaS and data analytics building on Cisco’s vision on the Internet of Everything which will be supported by Cisco Cloud Services” said Jacques Pommeraud, CEO, Canopy the Atos cloud.

Ian Matteson, Vice President and General Manager, Cloud for MicroStrategy said,” We’re excited about Cisco’s cloud strategy announcement. These new capabilities will allow us to better meet our customers’ business requirements by augmenting our existing SaaS offer with Cisco’s global reach and advanced deployment options. Addressing customer needs around data sovereignty and hybrid cloud will help us capture new opportunities with an affordable business model.”

Although many would argue saying Cisco may be rather late to enter the party, which is currently dominated by Amazon, Google, Rackpace, Salesforce and many others, Cisco thinks otherwise. Robert Lloyd, Cisco’s President of development and sales says, “The timing is right for Cisco and its partners to invest in a groundbreaking, application-centric global Intercloud to provide broader reach and faster time to market. Together, we have the capability to enable a seamless world of many clouds in which our customers have the choice to enable the right, highly secure cloud for the right workload, while creating strategic advantages for rapid innovation, and ultimately, business growth.” Cisco will announce this news in its Cisco Partner Summit 2014 held in Las Vegas. The Four day event began on Monday, 24^th March and ends on Thursday, 27^th March.

Via – Computerworld

Source – Cisco

Feature Photo Credit – Phill Wiffen/Flickr