As businesses increasingly opt for private clouds, public cloud hosting, and hybrid clouds to flexibly and quickly deliver business applications and services, Cisco has decided to build its “Intercloud” – a global network of clouds – in joint cooperation with a set of business partners. The vendor has budgeted over $1 billion for the cloud project.
The Cisco global Intercloud, initially announced in January 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 OpenStack-enabled network of clouds, which will feature APIs for rapid application development, will deliver an enterprise-grade portfolio of cloud hosting services for businesses, cloud hosting service providers and resellers.
Additional cloud investment
Cisco has planned to invest over $1 billion to build its Intercloud over the next two years. The vendor’s 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 cloud hosting-based services that Cisco plans to deliver to its customers.
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 hosting services to accelerate the Internet of Everything. The vendor plans to deliver Cisco Cloud Services through its channel partners and also directly to end customers.
The Cisco Cloud Services include:
- PaaS / IaaS – virtual compute, storage, and networking with enterprise-grade 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 hosting-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
