Cisco unveils cloud framework

Cloud Index, Cisco has unveiled a framework that combines what it sees as the foundational elements needed to help enterprises build, manage and connect to public, private and hybrid clouds, reveals Yahoo News.

Dubbed Cisco CloudVerse, the framework combines key cloud components that work to drive agility, economics and security. Specifically, those elements are a unified data centre, cloud intelligence network, and cloud applications and services.

Clearly, Cisco smells opportunity. The Cisco Cloud Index predicts that more than 50% of computing workloads in data centres will be cloud-based by 2014, and that global cloud traffic will grow over 12 times by 2015, to 1.6 zettabytes a year, says Newsfactor.com.

That's the equivalent of more than four days of business class video for every person on Earth.

“CloudVerse is interesting because while other companies are trying to figure out what they are going to do in the cloud, Cisco is providing a framework to help,” says Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at ZK Research.

“Cisco has forecast cloud adoption in its recent index, and they are the first company to do that. Now, they are offering the elements to help drive that adoption.”

CloudVerse's automated end user server provisioning depends on a service catalogue and self-service portal engineered by newScale, which Cisco acquired for an undisclosed amount in April, according to Information Week.

It acquired Tidal Software in May 2009 for $105 million and its software provides insight into what resources an application was using. That helps when it comes to provisioning end user servers and rightsizing their resources.