Cisco cloud sure as Microsoft partnership strengthens Azure

Cisco has extended its cloud and data centre relationship with Microsoft to include a new technology platform designed to accelerate service delivery and streamline the journey to the Intercloud for cloud providers.

Today’s next-generation cloud services require close compatibility between hardware, software, network, storage, and compute.

As a result, the tech giants believe cloud providers are challenged with managing the complexity and cost of integrating the infrastructure and application layers required to bring new cloud services to market.

To address these issues, Cisco and Microsoft are launching the Cisco Cloud Architecture for the Microsoft Cloud Platform—an integrated solution that combines Windows Azure Pack and Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) to help cloud providers deliver hybrid cloud services while drastically simplifying operations and reducing costs.

“We want our service providers partners to move up-market with us and offer higher-end cloud services,” says Nick Earle, senior vice president, Cloud and Managed Services, Cisco.

“By partnering with Microsoft we’re able to deliver a tightly integrated, application centric cloud architecture.

“This unique new platform will help our partners dramatically accelerate the delivery of new and innovative hybrid cloud services for their customers.”

Earle believes the Cisco Cloud Architecture for the Microsoft Cloud Platform will provide the building blocks for cloud providers to evolve beyond traditional infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offerings to create combined IaaS, platform as a service (PaaS), software as a service (SaaS) solutions that deliver more value to customers.

Furthermore, Earle says the combination of Windows Azure Pack and Cisco ACI allows partners to deliver services—from network services and disaster recovery, to big data, and enterprise application services—at DevOps speed, drastically reducing total cost of ownership and accelerating time-to-revenue.

This collaboration will deliver pre-packaged policy management libraries that allow cloud providers to implement applications more quickly with consistent policy management.

“Cisco and Microsoft already have a strong relationship in the cloud and data centre markets,” adds Aziz Benmalek, general manager, Hosting Service Providers, Microsoft.

“Today, we’re expanding that collaboration with a solution that will allow our mutual partners to deliver services quickly and grow revenue faster with a cloud-enabled platform.

“The work we’ve done to integrate Cisco ACI with Windows Azure Pack will allow cloud providers to dramatically accelerate time-to-market, while decreasing costs.

“Together, Cisco and Microsoft are helping our partners evolve with current market demand and rapidly shifting customer needs.”

Finally, Cisco and Microsoft plan to support their ecosystem partners with a full lifecycle go-to-market approach that delivers everything from service ideation and demand generation to customer retention.

The Cisco Powered and Microsoft Cloud OS Network (COSN) programs fully complement each other and is primarily designed to meet the needs of traditional enterprise applications.

It will complement Cisco’s OpenStack-based architectures for cloud native workloads and provide seamless hybrid cloud capability for connecting to Intercloud and Azure.