Igniting the Intercloud Partner Ecosystem

IT today is filled with disparate islands of clouds. Cisco’s strategy to connect those islands into an interconnected global network of clouds—the Intercloud—is unique in the market. But it’s our partner-centric cloud model that really helps us stand out from the usual cloud crowd.

We believe our partner-centric model is the winning strategy. A tightly knit ecosystem of trusted partners provides far greater infrastructure and application choice, greater industry expertise and better geographic coverage than any single vendor could.

Together, in just over a year, we’ve moved quickly from vision, to execution to momentum. We’ve laid the foundation for the Intercloud with a significant partner ecosystem of more than 60 Intercloud partners spanning more than 350 data centers across 50 countries.

While we are proud of what we’ve collectively achieved, our job is not done.

Today, we are introducing new programs, services and initiatives to help cloud builders, cloud providers and cloud resellers grow with us and further capture the Intercloud opportunity. We want to win with Intercloud together.

Cloud Builders:

During the past few years, building private clouds has been a lucrative and profitable business for Cisco partners. The even better news: we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. Customers are struggling with the complexity of enterprise clouds. Cisco is embedding Intercloud Fabric into all of our integrated infrastructure solutions to enable hybrid cloud. And now we’re taking steps to help our cloud builders tap this fast growing market with innovative technology and solutions.

• NEW Cisco OpenStack Private Cloud Bundle: Modern development teams love the ease, speed and predictability of public cloud, but administrators worry about control, reliability and hidden costs. In September 2014, Cisco acquired Metacloud, a provider of a fully-operated OpenStack private cloud solution for developers. Now available worldwide as Cisco OpenStack® Private Cloud, the solution provides the engineering and ongoing operations to deliver a public cloud experience within the firewalls in an organization.Today, we are announcing a new bundle for Cisco OpenStack Private Cloud designed to radically simplify the start-up process. We are creating an easy to order and set up configuration that combines hardware, software, and ongoing operations service for an OpenStack private cloud. The Metacloud team designed a managed private cloud that relieves the headaches of managing an OpenStack private cloud. Now we’re hoping to make it just as easy to build your private cloud.  For partners, the bundle will provide traditional hardware margins and a new reoccurring revenue stream on subscriptions while also opening up new professional services opportunities higher up the stack. It will be provided through an easy, fast and predictable experience similar to the plug and play Meraki model, which is gaining tremendous traction in the market.

• Cisco OpenStack Private Cloud is available today, with a growing list of customers in production around the world. We believe the new bundle will make the process of selling and onboarding customers with Cisco OpenStack Private Cloud easier for partners.

• NEW Open Pay Financing: A consumption-based variable financing model, Cisco Capital Open Pay brings the “scalability” of cloud to enterprise customers. It allows companies to receive equipment with more capacity than they initially need but only pay for what they use. This enables customers to address uncertain demands, such as seasonal fluctuations, in an efficient manner without compromising security, privacy, compliance or control. Cisco allows customers to deploy more and pay less. Open Pay will begin to roll out in the US during the next few months and will be available more broadly in the coming year.

Cloud Providers:

We’re also expanding our Cloud and Managed Services Program (CMSP) to enable cloud providers to participate in the Intercloud opportunity and successfully capitalize on the transition to hybrid IT. Simpler and more flexible, the new program was announced yesterday and introduces new Intercloud partner roles, additional cloud architectures and more Cisco Powered Intercloud services.

Cloud Resellers:

As the industry transitions toward cloud, Cisco is committed to helping our channel partners evolve to a hybrid IT business model. As market dynamics and customer needs change, there are rich recurring revenue opportunities for partners that deliver high-value managed services and hybrid cloud professional services.

• NEW Partner Cloud Professional Services: To help partners thrive in the hybrid IT era and capture the fast growing $20B cloud professional services opportunity Cisco is introducing Partner Cloud Professional Services enablement. These will   help accelerate a partner’s cloud professional services practice by driving revenue, profitability and portfolio differentiation for partners. It provides a framework built upon Cisco and our partners’ experience deploying and managing some of the world’s largest clouds. Partners receive ready-to-use tools, engagement templates, project blueprints, and sample deliverables. Many of these services will be built on Cisco smart services capabilities—to fuel consultative partner services across every stage of the cloud lifecycle. We are now offering seven new services to partners, with eight more in the immediate pipeline.

Our partner-centric cloud model provides a competitive advantage for Cisco and our partners. During the past year, we’ve worked together to lay a solid foundation and build momentum.  Now it’s time to add fuel to the fire.  Now it’s time to be bold.  Now it’s time to ignite the Cisco Partner Ecosystem around the Intercloud opportunity.