Cisco Rolls Out New Cloud Preparation Services

As Cisco Systems reinvents itself partly as a cloud-computing infrastructure provider, it needs to add a set of services to wrap around all the hardware and software it wants to sell.

On 30 June, that’s what the company did, launching a set of what it calls Cloud Enablement Services to go with its growing Data Center Solutions Portfolio. The idea is to prepare potential customers before they commit to building a cloud system.

Components from Cisco UCS

Of course, that portfolio contains presanctioned components from Cisco and its partners that make up Cisco’s Unified Computing System: Cisco’s own Intel-based servers and switches, EMC or NetApp storage, VMware virtualisation middleware, Microsoft applications, and BMC data centre management software, among others.

“Our position here is very clear: We’re not going to be cloud service providers like Amazon or Google. We help our customers [both enterprises and service providers] in their cloud journey to build their own public and private clouds, so they can in turn sell their own services,” Rashesh Jethi, director of Cisco Cloud Services, told eWEEK.

Sounds simple enough, but the fact is that Cisco—still primarily a networking, not a computing, expert—is positioning itself as a go-to cloud infrastructure provider, even though it has few cloud deployments to speak of at this time.

Three new go-to cloud services

Nonetheless, Cisco launched three new services aimed at helping potential customers explore their options.

They are: Cisco Cloud Strategy Service, designed to help customers determine what the cloud can do for their cost structures and processes; Cisco Cloud Planning and Design Service, which identifies which architecture can best work within a customer’s existing environment and maximise features such as virtualisation, orchestration speed and chargeback capability; and Cisco Cloud Implementation Service, for deploying cloud architecture on time, within budget and in customers’ own data centres.

Even though it appears obvious that Cisco would want to be pushing its own hardware and software through these services, Jethi told eWEEK that wasn’t necessarily the case.

“Customers can essentially work with their choice of technology partners. We are not necessarily pushing or espousing any set of products,” Jethi said. “The first two services are advisory in nature.

“When we get to the implementation services, however, customers usually implement some kind of Cisco technology.”

Cisco Cloud Enablement Services are available globally now.