Cisco and Dimension Data have expanded their 23-year relationship, with plans to accelerate and streamline hybrid cloud adoption globally.
This comes on the back of Cisco's March announcement that it will spend more than $1 billion to build what it claims will be the world's largest intercloud, and expand its cloud business over the next two years.
Cisco says the global intercloud - a network of clouds - will be created together with a set of partners. The intercloud is being architected for the "Internet of everything", with a distributed network and security architecture designed for high-value application workloads, real-time analytics, "near infinite" scalability, and full compliance with local data sovereignty laws, it said at the time.
Now the networking company has signed up Dimension Data as its first partner, saying it will use Dimension Data's managed cloud platform and software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings to deliver a suite of mid-market-centric cloud services to customers and resellers.
Solutions coming
Dimension Data and Cisco will partner to deliver an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) solution that will be packaged with Cisco technology and SaaS applications, including Microsoft SQL Server and SharePoint, says a joint statement.
The Cisco-validated and -branded solutions will be sold by Cisco and through its channel partner community. Dimension Data's global cloud service is available through 10 managed cloud platforms around the world, with plans to expand to 13 locations by September.
Dimension Data CEO Brett Dawson says: "Dimension Data is proud to be the first global intercloud partner." The group is "extremely excited to support Cisco and its partners in accelerating the market's move to cloud services", he adds.
As a Cisco intercloud partner, Dimension Data will evolve its managed cloud platform to embrace Cisco's application-centric infrastructure and intercloud fabric - the building blocks of the Cisco Cloud architecture.
Cisco development and sales president Rob Lloyd says: "Cloud is the latest frontier for innovation and growth."
Cisco will initially package Cisco Intercloud Fabric, Cisco UCS Director and Dimension Data's public IaaS into two different hybrid cloud solutions, giving customers different starting points on the journey to hybrid cloud, depending on the current state of their IT environment. The two hybrid cloud solutions are expected to be available globally from Cisco within 90 days, with additional solutions available in the coming months.
Cisco and Dimension Data will also collaborate to accelerate the availability of Cisco Cloud services for smaller service providers across emerging markets. This initiative will build on Dimension Data's OneCloud Partner Programme to deliver the technology platform, channel enablement and operational services required to accelerate time to market and revenue opportunities for service providers.
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