Microsoft and Cisco Target Cloud Service Providers for Hybrid
Microsoft and Cisco have announced a partnership that will target cloud service providers. The news of the announcement gives the team a chance to work closely together in order to pitch products to cloud service providers. Among these products are the Microsoft Azure Pack. With the Microsoft Azure Pack, cloud service providers can turn bare metal infrastructure into a fully orchestrated private cloud. With the help of Cisco, the networking core would be built using Cisco products.
At the surface level, the partnership between the two companies makes a lot of sense. In order to ensure a consistent experience for service providers, Microsoft needs to be able to guarantee that the core networking infrastructure will handle the sophisticated tasks that providers will need to carry out. By using Cisco as a partner on these endeavors, Microsoft can ensure that its products are delivered in a consistent manner. It’s a win-win-win for all parties involved.
Cloud service providers will gain the greatest benefit from the partnership. With hybrid cloud becoming the path that more organizations take, it becomes important to them to gain access to infrastructure that they both know and trust. Most corporate organizations use the Microsoft ecosystem of software while implementing a Cisco networking architecture behind the scenes. Since cloud service providers can offer these products as a bundle, it makes the decision for organizations to implement hybrid cloud that much easier.
“We want our service provider partners to move up-market with us and offer higher-end cloud services. 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,” said Nick Earle, Senior Vice President of Cloud and Managed Services at Cisco.
