Cisco announced partnerships with Dimension Data (part of NTT, Sungard Availability Services and Telstra to extend its vision of the Intercloud. The partners will align their public cloud infrastructure to the Cisco Cloud architecture and deliver Cisco Cloud services to customers and resellers.
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.
Some highlights of the partnerships
The deal with Dimension Data expands a 23-year relationship. 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, utilizing 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 utilizing 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.
Telstra said it will build a cloud infrastructure together with Cisco that provisions cloud and network services in real-time, providing greater speed, security and performance. This includes investing in the Cisco Evolved Services Platform for its networking infrastructure, enabling seamless and highly secure delivery of cloud applications to customers, across the network and cloud, all the way to the branch and user desktop. Telstra’s cloud offerings based on Cisco’s global cloud platform will be available in Australia by the end of 2014.
In March, Cisco announced plans to build "the world’s largest global Intercloud" – a network of clouds – together with a set of partners. The idea is to leverage 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. Cisco's open Intercloud promises APIs for rapid application development and a new enterprise-class portfolio of cloud IT services for businesses, service providers and resellers. It will support OpenStack and multiple hypervisors. It will also leverage Cisco's recently announced Application Centric Infrastructure.Cisco plans to invest over $1 billion to build its expanded cloud business over the next two years following a "partner-centric" business model. The Cisco Intercloud will be hosted across a global network of Cisco data centers and partner data centers. It will offer value-added application- and network-centric cloud services to accelerate the Internet of Everything.
