Google and Cisco Partnership Strengthens Hybrid Cloud Options

Google and Cisco Systems Inc. have entered the hybrid cloud computing market together with a jointly delivered solution.

The new offering enables businesses to house applications in containers based on Google’s Kubernetes standard and then deploy them seamlessly across off-premises infrastructure in the Google Cloud Platform and on-premises hyperconverged infrastructure from Cisco, which is headquartered in San Jose, Calif.

Designed to provide an open environment for hosting and migrating applications, the solution includes APIs for connecting with both its cloud-based and locally-installed components, as well as software from Mountain View, Calif.-based Google’s Apigee unit for managing those connections. Integrated service management functionality powered by the platform-independent Istio platform introduced by Google, IBM, and ridesharing service Lyft in May complements those capabilities with support for linking, securing, and managing microservices.

To ease administration across onsite and offsite resources, the new platform includes Cisco’s AppDynamics application performance monitoring and automation system. Cisco networking and security systems enable companies to apply a single set of network and security policies across a hybrid architecture as well.

Coordinated technical support from Cisco and Google is available, as are training and coding tools from Cisco’s DevNet developers network.

Cisco and Google plan to make the new platform available to a limited number of customers early in 2018, with general availability to follow later in the year. The solution’s Cisco software components will be licensed via one, three-, and five-year subscriptions. Pricing for the hardware components will be based on perpetual licenses, and users will purchase Google cloud services in the standard manner from both Google itself and its authorized resellers.

“Our partnership with Google gives our customers the very best cloud has to offer— agility and scale, coupled with enterprise-class security and support,” said Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins in a press statement. “We share a common vision of a hybrid cloud world that delivers the speed of innovation in an open and secure environment to bring the right solutions to our customers.”

The two industry heavyweights also describe their new offering as a way for businesses to migrate workloads into the public cloud at a pace of their choosing.

“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,” said Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene in today’s press release.

Google is now the last of the top three public cloud vendors with a hybrid deployment option for its customers. Microsoft was the first and initially only provider to make hybrid implementation available via integration between its Windows Server operating system and Azure public cloud.

Amazon Web Services countered more recently with a hybrid solution of its own. Introduced last October and formally launched in August, that system combines Amazon’s market leading cloud platform with software-defined data center products and associated support from VMware Inc., of Palo Alto, Calif.

For Cisco, today’s announcement represents the latest step in a steadily unfolding bid for leadership in a cloud infrastructure market projected to generate $44.2 billion in global spending this year, according to IDC. On Monday, the company revealed its intention to acquire cloud collaboration and unified communications provider BroadSoft Inc. in a deal valued at $1.9 billion. Cisco purchased AppDynamics for $3.7 billion and SD-WAN vendor Viptela Inc. for $610 million earlier this year as well.

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