LAS VEGAS – March 24, 2014 – As businesses increasingly embrace private, public, and hybrid clouds to cost-effectively and quickly deliver business applications and services, Cisco today announced plans to build the world’s largest global Intercloud – a network of clouds – together with a set of partners.  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.

Cisco expects to invest over $1 billion to build its expanded cloud business over the next two years.  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.”

Accelerating the Internet of Everything

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. 

The networked connection of people, data, processes and things, dubbed the Internet of Everything, is expected to be a $19 trillion economic opportunity in the coming decade.  The Internet of Everything movement, which is creating an entirely new set of requirements for globally distributed and highly secure clouds, has empowered Cisco and its partners to initiate the development of a massively scalable, flexible and highly secure Intercloud to deliver the mobile, collaborative and rich video cloud services that enable today’s new connected experiences.

The Cisco OpenStack-enabled Intercloud is designed to allow organizations and users to combine and move workloads – including data and applications – across different public or private clouds as needed, easily and securely, while maintaining associated network and security policies. It will also utilize Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) to optimize application performance and to make rolling out new services much faster. Cisco will improve application security, compliance, auditing and mobility by using ACI’s centralized, programmable security policy to enable fine-grained control and isolation at scale; suitable for private and public cloud environments. 

Extending Cisco Cloud Leadership

Cisco Cloud Services expand on the Cisco industry-leading cloud portfolio, which already includes SaaS offerings, such as WebEx®, Meraki® and Cisco Cloud Web Security; differentiated cloud services, such as hosted collaboration and cloud DVR; and technologies and services to build public and private clouds, such as the Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS®), integrated infrastructure solutions such as VCE Vblock™ Systems and NetApp FlexPod, and Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI).

Go-to-Market Strategy

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

Supporting Quotes from Cisco Cloud Services Partners

Erez Yarkoni, Executive Director Cloud, Global Enterprise and Services, Telstra, spoke of the Cisco relationship and the opportunities it presents for Telstra customers: “Our customers will now have access to cloud infrastructure from a global leader, allowing them to select the cloud service to meet their requirements and scale network and cloud resources to deliver service agility, security and performance. Applications are critical to delivering business value and we believe we can offer a differentiated solution for managing applications across clouds. Our longstanding relationship with Cisco allows us to offer deeper and broader service capabilities to help our customers manage their critical applications, making the transition to the cloud simpler and more cost effective.”

“Allstream is the only coast-to-coast communication provider in Canada exclusively focused on serving the business community. We pride ourselves on being able to deliver great customer service and cost-effective business solutions, backed by our world-class IP network,” said Michael Strople, President, Allstream. "We’re excited to use Cisco Cloud Services to expand our cloud portfolio and rapidly offer new cloud-based services to our customers without the need for major capital investments."

“As our enterprise customers continue to transition to the cloud, they are demanding hybrid cloud capabilities to meet the needs of differentiated workloads. Cisco Cloud Services offered via Canopy will give them a reliable, highly secure and flexible cloud platform option,” said Jacques Pommeraud, CEO, Canopy the Atos cloud. “As the largest European cloud provider, we are keen to further our portfolio, in particular in SaaS and data analytics building on Cisco’s vision on the Internet of Everything which will be supported by Cisco Cloud Services”

“Demand for reliable, highly secure and flexible cloud services that are easily managed from a single platform and can quickly scale is growing within the IT channel,” says Nimesh Dave, Executive Vice President of Global Business Process and Cloud Computing, Ingram Micro. “As channel partners’ service models continue to evolve, they are seeking out vendors offering turnkey cloud services that are easily integrated and enable them to meet customers’ business needs. Cisco Cloud Services are a great example of what channel partners are looking for from a vendor partner in this new era of anywhere, anytime computing.”

“As our customers continue to transition to the cloud they are demanding reliable, highly secure, open and flexible cloud platforms, layered with services and applications on top that transform their access to and use of a growing range of business transformation applications,” said Chris Gabriel, CTO Logicalis Group. “They then want cloud to provide scale and consistency of service wherever their organisation might be, anywhere in the world.  In launching their own Cloud Services, Cisco has made a significant undertaking to our customers to make cloud reliable, highly secure, flexible and scalable, and this is truly credible because these services are backed by one of the world’s strongest technology brands and IT service innovators.”

“We’re excited about Cisco’s cloud strategy announcement,” said Ian Matteson, Vice President and General Manager, Cloud, MicroStrategy.  “These new capabilities will allow us to better meet our customers’ business requirements by augmenting our existing SaaS offer with Cisco’s global reach and advanced deployment options. Addressing customer needs around data sovereignty and hybrid cloud will help us capture new opportunities with an affordable business model.”

"Utilizing Cisco Cloud Services will enable OnX to focus on our core competency; which is to deliver a world-class managed services experience, based on ITIL and ITSM best practices." said Wayne Kiphart, President, OnX Managed Services.  "Our customers are looking for flexibility in their cloud infrastructure solutions, including the ability to integrate and customize the highly secure delivery of services from multiple cloud providers, regardless of location.  Because Cisco is building its cloud services as an open, secure, heterogeneous hybrid cloud environment we can cost effectively address their needs and deploy our capital resources on strategic initiatives."

"Our customers continue to look to the cloud for more information availability functions such as cloud enabled managed hosting services, extra compute capacity, disaster recovery, and more,” Keith Tilley EVP Sungard Availability Services. "Cisco Cloud Services give us the ability to quickly scale our cloud offerings to meet our customers’ needs enabling us to continue to provide the value added services they need to grow their businesses."

“Our customers have many reasons to migrate to the cloud, and the business case justifications are well documented; to drive cost savings, to move to a variable cost base, access to a scalable platform and an environment to provision services quickly,” said Jeff Heenan-Jalil, Vice President, Wipro Ltd. “For whatever the drivers may be they definitely want access to a service which will enable an evolution of innovation and service improvement through the use of this technology.  This partnership with Cisco Cloud Services complements our portfolio and further strengthens our continued relationship with Cisco.”

Additional Resources:

Cisco’s Robert Lloyd Platform blog on Cisco Intercloud

 RSS Feed for Cisco: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/rss.html

 Tags:  Cisco Services, Cisco Intercloud, Cisco Evolved Services Platform, Robert Lloyd

 About Cisco:

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in IT that helps companies seize the opportunities of tomorrow by proving that amazing things can happen when you connect the previously unconnected. For ongoing news, please go to http://thenetwork.cisco.com.

 # # #

Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release may be deemed to contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements include, among others, statements regarding Cisco plans to build the world’s largest global Intercloud together with a set of partners, delivery of a new enterprise-class portfolio of cloud IT services for businesses, service providers, and resellers, Cisco’s expected investment to build its expanded cloud business, rapid acceleration of additional investment to drive the global scale and breadth of services Cisco plans to deliver to its customers, and Cisco’s expanded cloud leadership, go-to-market strategy and cloud service offerings that involve risks and uncertainties.  Readers are cautioned that these forward-looking statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual future events or results due to a variety of factors, including, among other things: business and economic conditions and growth trends in the networking industry, our customer markets and various geographic regions; global economic conditions and uncertainties in the geopolitical environment; overall information technology spending; the growth and evolution of the Internet and levels of capital spending on Internet-based systems; variations in customer demand for products and services, including sales to the service provider market and other customer markets; the return on our investments in certain priorities, including our foundational priorities, and in certain geographical locations; our ability to achieve expected benefits of our partnerships; increased competition in our product and service markets, including the data center; dependence on the introduction and market acceptance of new product offerings and standards; rapid technological and market change; and other factors listed in Cisco’s most recent reports on Forms 10-Q and 10-K filed on February 20, 2014 and September 10, 2013, respectively. Any forward-looking statements in this release are based on limited information currently available to Cisco, which is subject to change, and Cisco will not necessarily update the information.