Cisco and Google announced a new partnership on Oct. 24. They launched a bid to help enable a hybrid cloud solution that uses Cisco hardware on-premises and Google Cloud Platform.
The effort makes use of the Kubernetes container orchestration platform that both Cisco and Google support, as well as the open-source Istio service mesh technology. Kubernetes has long been promised to help enable multi-cloud deployment use cases, and the joint Cisco-Google solution will use Kubernetes policies to enable lifecycle management across hybrid cloud deployments.
“This joint solution from Google and Cisco facilitates an easy and incremental approach to tapping the benefits of the Cloud,” Diane Greene, CEO of Google Cloud, stated. “This is what we hear customers asking for.”
According to Google, joint customers will be able to use the Cisco Private Cloud Infrastructure that is powered by OpenStack to manage Kubernetes clusters. Then using a Google Cloud Platform (GCP) service catalog, Cisco customers will be able to configure and deploy remote services easily.
“Our solution abstracts the various capabilities in environments – including on-premises and in the cloud – enabling applications to connect with the native capabilities in whatever environment they are run in,” Kip Compton, VP of Cisco Cloud Platform and Solutions, stated. “This means developers can build modern applications wherever they want and deploy wherever they want, unlocking tremendous developer productivity.
“It also means that applications in the cloud can take advantage of on-premises capabilities (including existing IT systems), and applications on-premises can take advantage of new cloud capabilities,” Compton added.
Though Cisco and Google customers have been asking for a joint solution, few will actually get their hands on it quickly. Only a limited number of customers are set to get access to the new Cisco Google solution in early 2018, with general availability not set until the end of 2018.
InterCloud
Cisco has tried to enable hybrid cloud and cloud federation efforts in the past, with mixed success.
In 2014, Cisco announced a $1 billion investment into the cloud services market, led with its OpenStack initiatives and a committment to the company’s own intercloud initiative.
Intercloud was first announced in January 2014 as a way to federate public and private clouds and was ultimately abandoned by Cisco.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
