You said "Over the past year, Cisco has been building up its OpenStack professional services capabilities."

I believe that this strategy is wise. Given the current state of market development for OpenStack (early-adopter), the requirement for training, skills certification and consulting guidance is of paramount importance.

In 2015, more CIOs and IT managers at Service Providers will be seeking proven expertise to help them in the early phases of their planning, as they scope out their initial OpenStack proof of concept deployments, etc. Besides, the move to SDN and NFV will create even more demand for these professional services.