Call it a potential partnership for the ages. Cisco and Google have joined forces to deliver hybrid cloud solutions, the companies confirmed in recent days.
The hybrid cloud offering will allow applications and services to be deployed, managed, and secured across on-premises environments and Google Cloud Platform. “The solution delivers cloud speed and scale, with enterprise-class security,” the companies said in a prepared statement.
The focal point of the partnership is based around Kubernetes, the Google-mentored container orchestration tool. It will also take advantage of the Istio service mesh, which helps connect and secure microservices across clouds.
Enterprises will be able to run, secure, and monitor workloads, helping them plan their cloud migration while avoiding vendor lock-in, Google and Cisco assert. It’s potentially useful for companies that want to move their data to the cloud but are hesitant about going all-in.
"This joint solution from Google and Cisco facilitates an easy and incremental approach to tapping the benefits of the Cloud. This is what we hear customers asking for," Diane Greene, CEO, Google Cloud, said in the press release.
Essentially, the companies are combining their individual strengths, bringing Google’s cloud knowledge and combining it with Cisco’s on-premises knowledge. Google has aligned with VMware and Nutanix in similar deals recently. Cisco has made a number of deals of late, buying up Springpath as well as BroadSoft this year.
The pact positions the companies to face down Amazon’s cloud offering, Amazon Web Services (AWS). As of now, Amazon dominates the IaaS public cloud market, though Google's business in that sector also is growing. Google has also worked closely with Itopia in recent months to promote Windows-based desktops as a service.
The Cisco-Google offerings will be available to early customers in the first half of 2018, while the rest of the world will have to wait until the latter part of the year. We'll be watching to see if or how they resemble Microsoft Azure stack offerings that Cisco plans to introduce.
Track additional Cisco-related news this week as we cover Cisco Partner Summit 2017 updates right here.
