Cisco advances cloud strategy

Demonstrating accelerating momentum for its new cloud business, Cisco has announced new cloud partners and customers, an updated array of cloud service offerings, and key cloud organisation leadership appointments.

This news builds on plans announced in March by Cisco to build the world's largest global Intercloud together with its partners to address customer requirements for a globally distributed, highly secure cloud platform capable of meeting the robust demands of the Internet of Everything. Designed for high-value application workloads, with real-time analytics and "near infinite" scalability, Cisco’s open Intercloud allows local hosting and local provider options that enable data sovereignty. The hybrid cloud capabilities that differentiate the Cisco® Cloud are built upon the Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) and Cisco Intercloud Fabric technologies.

· Dimension Data and Sungard Availability Services (Sungard AS) will join Telstra as Cisco Intercloud partners – cloud providers that will invest with Cisco to align their public cloud infrastructure to the Cisco Cloud architecture and deliver Cisco Cloud services to customers and resellers.
· VCE and NetApp announced they will collaborate closely with Cisco to build “Intercloud-ready” integrated infrastructure solutions.
· Johnson Controls announced that it will enable Cisco Cloud partners and customers to quickly add computing capacity via modular data center solutions.
· Accenture has licensed Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud software to expand the cloud management and orchestration capabilities of the Accenture Cloud Platform.

Partner and Customer Momentum in Detail
· Dimension Data and Cisco will expand their 23-year relationship to accelerate and streamline hybrid cloud adoption globally. Cisco will use Dimension Data’s Managed Cloud Platform and SaaS solutions to deliver a suite of midmarket cloud services to its customers and resellers. Dimension Data and Cisco will partner to deliver an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) solution that will be packaged with Cisco technology and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, including Microsoft SQL Server and SharePoint. The Cisco validated and co-branded solutions will be sold by Cisco through the Cisco channel partner community. Dimension Data’s global cloud service is available via 10 data centers around the world, with plans to expand to 13 locations by September 2014. As a Cisco Intercloud partner, Dimension Data will evolve its Managed Cloud Platform to embrace Cisco ACI and Intercloud Fabric — the building blocks of the Cisco Cloud architecture.
· Sungard Availability Services is a Cisco Intercloud partner, utilising its cloud infrastructure to deliver new Cisco Cloud services to customers and resellers. As a Cisco Intercloud partner, Sungard AS is expanding its cloud infrastructure utilising the foundational elements of the Cisco Cloud architecture, including Cisco ACI. Sungard AS is poised to become the first cloud provider to market with a Cisco ACI-based public cloud offer built on an application-centric cloud architecture. Cisco will feature two cloud services from Sungard AS in its service catalog: an IaaS offering that enables customers to rapidly deploy hybrid clouds; and a disaster recovery-as-a-service offering to deliver business continuity.
· VCE will integrate Cisco’s Intercloud Fabric with Vblock Systems. By providing an onramp to Cisco’s Intercloud workload migration capabilities, VCE Vblock Systems will enable customers to rapidly, seamlessly and securely manage their private, hybrid and public cloud environments. This integration will enable the management of cloud-enabled workloads across heterogeneous environments to be centralised with consistent network and security policies and optimised to fit the needs of the business.
· NetApp has announced plans to integrate its industry-leading data management technology with Cisco’s Intercloud technology to simplify secure, cross-cloud interoperability and to accelerate adoption of hybrid clouds by mutual customers. NetApp and Cisco will also incorporate the Cisco Intercloud Fabric into the FlexPod roadmap. By delivering uniform control across workload locations, FlexPod will be able to combine the transformative power of public cloud computing with private cloud deployments. More broadly across their portfolio, NetApp will continue to integrate its clustered Data ONTAP technology with the Cisco Intercloud Fabric and Cisco ACI policy control to centralise and simplify data management and data movement for cloud-enabled application workloads.
· Accenture has licensed Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud (IAC) software as a component of its Accenture Cloud Platform (ACP). Cisco IAC will provide the cloud management and orchestration software for the next release of the Accenture Cloud Platform (ACP), Accenture’s cloud management platform that provides value-added cloud services to clients, and for public cloud services offered by other cloud providers. Cisco IAC was chosen as ACP's preferred cloud management software on the strength of its service catalog and orchestration capabilities.
· Johnson Controls is the preferred global provider of modular data center solutions for the Cisco Cloud. By using modular components for computing, communications, security, power and cooling, the timelines for new data center construction are cut in half, allowing Cisco Cloud customers and partners to quickly deploy “Intercloud-ready” computing capabilities. Johnson Controls also offers the ability to manage and remotely monitor data center facilities for Cisco Cloud customers and partners. As a multi-industrial company and industry leader in facility construction and management, Johnson Controls provides facility management services in more than 250 data centers across 29 countries.
· The University of British Columbia (UBC) announced that it will use Cisco EnergyWise™ cloud energy management services, which deliver automated management of electricity usage. UBC will use Cisco EnergyWise cloud energy management services to expand its current EnergyWise networked devices 10-fold and will work together with Cisco to develop custom interfaces so additional devices can be managed by EnergyWise.
· Cisco announced that it has surpassed 175 channel partners, including CDW and GTRI, who are now certified to manage and resell Cisco Cloud services.

Cisco Names Key Cloud Leaders
Cisco has also announced the appointment of Cisco Cloud executives responsible for driving the company’s cloud strategy.
• Nick Earle will lead the Cloud and Managed Services organisation, reporting to senior vice president of Services Edzard Overbeek.
• Dr. Gee Rittenhouse will lead the new Cloud and Virtualisation Group under executive vice president and chief development officer Pankaj Patel.
• Faiyaz Shahpurwala continues to lead the Cloud Infrastructure and Managed Services Organisation, also reporting to Edzard Overbeek.

More than 3,700 Cisco employees are now driving the execution of Cisco’s cloud strategy, including top new talent and existing Cisco leaders such as Edison Peres, who has directed Cisco’s worldwide channel efforts for over 10 years and will lead the Cloud and Managed Services partner organisation, reporting to Nick Earle. Several new Cisco Cloud executives have deep experience in deploying global cloud services, including a former OpenStack team lead at AT&T, former OpenStack developers at AT&T, and the former chief cloud architect at Yahoo. Cisco has also recently made key additions to its cloud organization from top cloud providers, including Amazon, CenturyLink Technology Solutions, IBM, Microsoft and others.