Banking high on cloud, Cisco is planning to build world’s largest Intercloud, a network of clouds, together with a set of partners and is looking to invest more than $1 billion over the next two years to build it.
The company revealed it at the ongoing Partner Summit in Las Vegas. 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.
Its partner-centric business model, which enables partner capabilities and investments, is expected to generate a rapid acceleration of additional investment to drive the global scale and breadth of services that Cisco plans to deliver to its customers.
The company plans to deliver Cisco Cloud Services with and through Cisco partners.
The following organizations, which are either planning to deliver Cisco Cloud Services or have endorsed Cisco’s global Intercloud initiative, represent a sampling of the kinds of global partners Cisco expects to work with to build its cloud business: Leading Australian service provider Telstra; Canadian business communications provider Allstream; European cloud company Canopy, an Atos company; 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.
“Customers, providers and channel partners alike are turning to Cisco to create open and highly secure hybrid cloud environments, and they want to rapidly deploy valuable enterprise-class cloud experiences for key customers – all while mitigating the risk of capital investment,” said Robert Lloyd, president of development and sales, Cisco.
“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.”
Hosted across a global network of Cisco and partner data centers, the Cisco global Intercloud will offer an expanded suite of value-added application- and network-centric cloud services to accelerate the Internet of Everything.
Cisco is expanding the Cisco Powered program to include Cisco Cloud Services. Cisco will sell these new services through channel partners and directly to end customers. Partners who develop Cisco Powered services can offer more cloud offerings faster, with lower up front development costs, and operate at cloud speed and scale.
Cisco Cloud Services Offers:
· PaaS / IaaS – virtual compute, storage, and networking with world-class economics
· Cisco Cloud Services powered by SAP HANA – the popular in-memory platform optimized for Cisco Unified Compute System (UCS)
· Collaboration — Cisco WebEx® suite of collaboration applications and services
· Security – Cisco Scansafe managed threat defense
· Network Infrastructure Management – Cisco Meraki (cloud managed networks)
· Virtual Desktop-as-a-Service – desktop virtualization solutions from Cisco, VMware and Citrix
· Partner-branded Cisco Hosted Collaboration Services
· Cisco Videoscape Cloud DVR – scalable cloud resources for content ingest, recording and playout
· Cisco Virtualized Mobile Internet – a premium data delivery service
· Virtualized Managed Services – cloud-based virtual services for faster provisioning and service agility (e.g., vFW, vPE and vCPE)
· Remote Management Services (RMS) – remote management of IT operations enabled by Cisco Smart Services
· Compliance and Configuration Management Services (CMCS) – automated management of Compliance and Configuration ITIL processes
· IT Service Management Services (ServiceGrid) – cloud-based management of the IT Service Management function
· Energy Management Services (Energywise) – automated management of electricity usage for the entire IT network
· Collaboration as a Service (CaaS) – voice and contact center as a service
