Cisco announces what it claims is the biggest global cloud network at its Partner Summit conference-- a Cisco Intercloud promising to bridge multiple public clouds with private enterprise cloud services.
According to the company the $1 billion investment sees the creation of "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 Intercloud is OpenStack-enabled and allows organisations to combine and move workloads (including data and applications) across public or private clouds while maintaining associated network and security policies. It uses Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) to optimise application performance and features fine-grained control and isolation at scale, making it suitable for both private and public cloud environments.
It will feature services such as IaaS and PaaS, as well as existing offerings such as Meraki network infrastructure management and Hosted Collaboration Services (HCS), SAP HANA-as-a-Services, Microsoft Suite-as-a-Service and Virtual Desktop-as-a-Service.
“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,” the company says. “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.”
The company already names a number of Intercloud partners, including Telstra, Ingram Micro, Logicalis, Canopy, Allstream and OnX Managed Services.
According to Cisco there is good reason to invest in the cloud-- the company predicts the "addressable cloud market" will grow from $22bn in 2013 to $88bn by 2017.
