Category Archives: Cisco

Cisco, Frost Data Capital, Internet of Things, IoT, Jeff Scheel, John Vigouroux, News & Analysis, startups, Symantec

Symantec, Frost Data Capital to incubate startups solving IoT security challenges

Symantec and FDC are to incubate ten IoT security startups per year

Symantec and FDC are to incubate ten IoT security startups per year

Symantec is teaming up with venture capital firm Frost Data Capital to incubate startups primarily developing solutions to secure the Internet of Things.

The companies initially plan to create and seed up to ten early-stage startups with funding, resources and expertise, with Symantec offerings access to its own security technologies and Frost Data Capital its data analytics platforms.

“We’re taking a fresh look at driving innovation in the market and this partnership will enable Symantec to transform raw ideas and concepts into meaningful security companies,” said Jeff Scheel, senior vice president, strategy, alliances and corporate development at Symantec. “By collaborating with Frost Data Capital, we create an environment primed to incubate new, innovative and disruptive startups in cyber security – especially in the realm of IoT technologies where verticals like process control, automotive, health care and energy require specialized skills.”

The goal is to encourage development of threat detection analytics services capable of being applied in IoT architectures, where data volume and velocity can be particularly acute challenges when it comes to security and performance.

“We’re seeing a huge opportunity in the IoT security market,” said John Vigouroux, managing partner and president of Frost Data Capital. “We’re excited to work with Symantec to bring cutting-edge, relevant security analytics solutions to market rapidly, in order to prevent next generation cyber attacks on corporate infrastructures. Symantec brings to the table world-class security technology, global presence and strategic relationships that will be instrumental to launching these startups.”

Symantec and FDC are not the only firms looking to incubate startups with a view towards developing IoT solutions that complement their own offerings. Cisco recently announced significant efforts to incubate French and UK startups innovating in the area of IoT networks, while Intel and Deutsche Telekom unveiled similar moves in Europe last year.

Cisco, Internet of Things, IoT, John Chambers, News & Analysis

Cisco puts $1bn towards UK Internet of Things sector

Cisco is pouring $1bn into the UK IoT sector

Cisco is pouring $1bn into the UK IoT sector

Cisco announced this week it is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into a range of UK initiatives over the next three to five years aimed at accelerating local development of Internet of Things solutions.

Cisco said it plans to spend $150m on funding startups that develop IoT solutions for retail, healthcare and smart city applications.

The company plans to use much of the revenue expanding local networking training initiatives, fund technology centres of excellence in the north, double its central London footprint by the end of this year, and add 200 new jobs to its UK division.

“We believe the UK is well on its way to becoming one of the top digitized countries in the world, and we’re proud to once again activate new programmes and continue our deep commitment to partnering with the UK government,” said John Chambers, chairman and chief executive of Cisco.

“Today, we are pleased to make our next series of strategic commitments, totalling over $1bn, to support the next phase of the UK’s digitization plans,” he added

The move follows similar investments made in 2011, when the company launched the British Innovation Gateway, a UK-wide series of initiatives and partnerships aimed at supporting local digital startups; Cisco ploughed about $500m into that initiative.

According to the company, the UK is its second largest market outside of the US. Earlier this week Cisco also announced a $100m initiative in France to help fund local Internet of Things (IoT) startups, partner with local businesses and cultivate IoT-specific skills.

Cisco, M&A, MaintenanceNet, Telco Cloud, telecoms

Cisco to buy MaintenanceNet for $139m to bolster telecoms strategy

Cisco is buying MaintenanceNet for $139m

Cisco is buying MaintenanceNet for $139m

Cisco is looking to buy data analytics and business process automation specialist MaintenanceNet for $139m, the company announced this week. The networking giant said the move will help its partners capture more revenue from contract renewals, and may help strengthen its telecoms strategy.

MaintenanceNet offers data analytics and software that helps automate and manage the customer contract renewal process. It uses data analytics to aim special offers and new services at existing customers that are up for contract renewal in an automated fashion.

“This helps Cisco partners capture high-volume and low-dollar sales opportunities that may risk being overlooked. This streamlined process enables services contract opportunities to be pursued quickly and efficiently,” explained Debbie Dunnam, senior vice president of worldwide services sales at Cisco.

“MaintenanceNet will be joining Cisco’s Global Customer Success (GCS) organisation, a group dedicated to improving customer engagement and delivering a coordinated, end to end experience to our partners and customers. This acquisition is a critical component of our strategy for GCS to simplify and digitize our business processes.”

The move comes less than two weeks after Cisco paid $635m for OpenDNS, a move intended to strengthen its security services portfolio – with a particular view towards offering IoT-focused network security services.

Cisco said the MaintenanceNet purchase will enable it to further facilitate its partners’ businesses, and a segment one can imagine these kinds of capabilities being particularly relevant is telecoms, where Cisco has been working to make inroads with it Intercloud strategy – and where its business has struggled the most in recent quarters.

Telcos depend heavily on driving revenue growth through both new subscriptions and up-selling existing subscribers, not to mention keeping the subscriber attrition rate low, so anything Cisco can offer to help its partners (and itself, particularly as it goes to market with its own cloud services) achieve these goals will be a strategic imperative.

Cisco, Europe, Internet of Things, IoT, News & Analysis, Robert Vassoyan

Cisco bolsters IoT partnerships with French startups

Cisco is beefing up its IoT strategy and targeting French startups to do it

Cisco is beefing up its IoT strategy and targeting French startups to do it

Cisco is making good on a promise made in February to team up with the French government on a $100m initiative to help fund local Internet of Things (IoT) startups, partner with local businesses and cultivate IoT-specific skills.

Among the company’s initiatives include a competition to develop enterprise-focused IoT services and apps that foster social and environmental innovation, and a partnership with the NUMA Sprint accelerator programme which will see the company support up to 22 IoT startups incubated in the programme.

Cisco also said it’s partnering with Actility, a provider of IoT and machine-to-machine services for energy management, to improve connectivity between low-power sensors using LoRaWAN, and investing in Parisian startup 6Wind, a software firm developing software-defined networking and network function virtualisation solutions.

“Innovation is in the DNA of Cisco. France has almost limitless potential and our mission is to support innovation across our entire ecosystem,” Robert Vassoyan, chief executive of Cisco France. “These first initiatives demonstrate our active cooperation with innovative companies to aid them in their development, and show that we are committed to continuing our efforts in this area to drive growth, competitivity and employment of our country.”

Cisco has stepped up its IoT strategy as of late, most recently buying connected things tracker and network security specialist OpenDNS for $635m.

Cisco, Dell, HP, IDC, Kuba Stolarski, News & Analysis

Cloud infrastructure revenues grow 25% in Q1 2015

IDC Q1 2015 cloud revenuesRevenue from cloud infrastructure including servers, storage and switches grew 25.1 per cent year on year in the first quarter of this year – the highest rate in over a year according to analyst house IDC and the second highest level of total spending in the past nine quarters.

Cloud IT infrastructure spending climbed to 30 per cent or nearly a third of overall IT infrastructure spending in the first quarter of this year, up from 26.4 per cent last year. Private cloud revenues grew nearly 25 per cent year on year, which was slightly outpaced by public cloud growth at close to 26 per cent.

Kuba Stolarski, research manager, server, virtualization and workload research at IDC said the shift to cloud seems to be the main driver of growth in the IT infrastructure market at the moment.

“Cloud IT infrastructure growth continues to outpace the growth of the overall IT infrastructure market, driven by the transition of workloads onto cloud-based platforms,” Stolarski said.

“Both private and public cloud infrastructures have been growing at a similar pace, suggesting that customers are open to a broad array of hybrid deployment scenarios as they modernize their IT for the 3rd Platform, begin to deploy next-gen software solutions, and embrace modern management processes that enable agile, flexible, and extensible cloud platforms.”

HP, Dell and Cisco landed in the top three spots in IT infrastructure market share with 15.7, 11.9 and 9.3 per cent respectively. Lenovo’s four per cent year on year growth seems down largely to its acquisition of IBM’s x86 server business.

It hasn’t been the best quarter for storage on the other hand. Year on year quarterly growth rates declined slightly for both EMC and NetApp, and interestingly ODM direct sales also declined, suggesting both enterprises and the scale-out market still find big box vendors a competitive option when compared to lower cost Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturers.

Cisco, David Goeckeler, Hilton Romanski, Internet of Things, IoT, M&A, News & Analysis, OpenDNS

Cisco to acquire OpenDNS to strengthen cloud security for IoT

Cisco plans to acquire OpenDNS for $635m

Cisco plans to acquire OpenDNS for $635m

Cisco is to acquire cloud-based network security provider OpenDNS for $635m.

OpenDNS’ offering combines DNS services with a managed network security service that tracks devices and traffic and helps mitigate malware or denial of service threats. But it also adds predictive intelligence capabilities by using big data analytics to metabolise real-time behaviour and machine learning algorithms to automate mitigating action.

Cisco said the acquisition would strengthen security services portfolio, a core element of its Internet of Things (IoT) strategy.

“As more people, processes, data and things become connected, opportunities for security breaches and malicious threats grow exponentially when away from secure enterprise networks,” said Hilton Romanski, Cisco chief technology and strategy officer.

“OpenDNS has a strong team with deep security expertise and key technology that complements Cisco’s security vision. Together, we will help customers protect their extended network wherever the user is and regardless of the device.”

As part of the deal, which is expected to close sometime in the first quarter of next year, the OpenDNS team will join the Cisco Security Business Group led by David Goeckeler, the division’s vice president and general manager.

Targeting the network has become an increasingly important component of enterprise IT security, particularly with the explosion of malware and denial of service attacks – and will continue growing in importance as the IoT brings vast volumes of automated connectivity and data transaction.

The trend has seen more emphasis place on cloud-based security services, which can act as a security perimeter without needing to install anything with a datacentre. According to Gartner, the cloud-based security market with grow from $2.1bn in 2013 to $3.bn this year.

Cisco, Cisco ACI, Featured, Network Infrastructure, Networking, Public Cloud, SDN

Part 2: Cisco Live 2015 Recap – AWS Direct Connect, VIRL Facelift & More!

It was another great Cisco Live event this year! My colleague Dan Allen wrote a post summarizing the key takeaways he got out of the event. I wanted to add in some of my own to supplement his. As you probably know, it was John Chambers last Cisco Live event as CEO – which makes it especially cool that I got this picture taken with him!

cisco live

Expanded DevNet Zone

Last year Cisco introduced the DevNet zone which was focused on giving people hands on access to Cisco’s most ground breaking technology that could be construed as science fiction unless they opened their toy box and let people see and touch what they’ve been hiding in it. This year we got to play with Internet of Things development environments, API driven SDN solutions, virtual network simulation toolkits and drone technologies hosted by the co-founder of iRobot. Last year, it was 4 little booths in between two restrooms with giveaways to get people to come in. This year, it consumed a whole section of the convention center with over 20 booths, 6 interactive labs and different exhibits and guest speakers delivering presentations on the future of technology.

Programmability and automation were a part of every session no matter what the topic was

It didn’t matter if you were attending entry-level or advanced breakout sessions, IT management track courses or developer workshops; everything you attended at Cisco Live this year had something to do with automation, programmability, cloud connectivity or application awareness. This was very different from any of the 8 Cisco Live events I’ve attended throughout my career. If you’re a technologist and have any doubt in your mind that this is where the industry is headed, you’d better start learning new skills because, like it or not, our customers and the customers of our customers are, or will soon be, believers and consumers of these technologies and consumption models.

Cisco and Amazon TEAM up to BEEF up AWS Direct Connect

AWS Direct Connect is a part of Amazon’s APN Partner program that consists of ISP’s that provide WAN circuits directly connected to AWS datacenters. That means if you’re a Level3 or AT&T MPLS customer and you have 10 offices and 2 datacenters on that MPLS network, Amazon AWS can now become another site on that private WAN. That’s HUGE! Just look at a small portion of their ISP partner list:

  • AT&T
  • Cinenet
  • Datapipe
  • Equinix, Inc.
  • FiberLight
  • Fiber Internet Center
  • First Communications
  • Global Capacity
  • Global Switch
  • Global Telecom & Technology, Inc. (GTT)
  • Interxion
  • InterCloud
  • Level 3 Communications, Inc.
  • Lightower
  • Masergy
  • Maxis
  • Megaport
  • MTN Business
  • NTT Communications Corporation
  • Sinnet
  • Sohonet
  • Switch SUPERNAP
  • Tata Communications
  • tw telecom
  • Verizon
  • Vocus
  • XO Communications

 

Combine that with a CSR1000v and an ASAv and you have a public cloud that can be managed and utilized exactly like a physical colo that is completely transparent to both your network teams and users.

ASAv in AWS

This little announcement slipped under the radar when it was made a week before Cisco Live but was definitely front and center in the Cisco Solutions Theater in the world of solutions. The ASA1000v has been Cisco’s only answer to a full featured virtual security appliance for the past two years or so. The only problem is that it required the Nexus1000v with which the industry as a whole has been reluctant to embrace (particularly in the public cloud space). Well good news, the ASAv doesn’t require the Nexus 1000v and, therefore, has opened the doors for the likes of Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure to let us make use of an all Cisco Internet and WAN edge within an AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). This means you can manage the edge of your AWS VPC the same way you manage the edge of your datacenters and offices. The ASAv supports everything an ASA supports which will soon include the full FirePower feature set. Have you ever tried building a VPN tunnel to an ASA at a customer’s datacenter from the AWS VPC Customer Gateway? I have – not the best experience. Well, not any more – it’s pretty cool!

ACI was big this year, but not as big as last year

I was expecting more of the same from last year on this one. Just about everywhere you looked last year, you saw something about ACI. This year was a more targeted effort both with the breakout session and in the Cisco Solutions Theater. I’m not saying it didn’t get a lot of attention, just not as much as last year and certainly not more. This shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise for anyone used to Cisco’s marketing and positioning tactics, however. Last year was geared toward awareness of the new technology and this year was more geared toward the application of the technology across very specific use cases and advances in it’s capabilities. The honeymoon is clearly over and everyone was focused on how to live every-day life with ACI being a part of it.

APIC can interact with ASA and other non-Cisco devices

The ACI APIC is slowly getting more and more abilities related to northbound programmatic interaction with other Cisco and non-Cisco appliances. For example, it can now instantiate policies and other configuration elements of ASA, Fortigate, F5 and Radware appliances as part of its policy driven infrastructures.

iWAN almost officially tested and supported on CSR1000v

As of next month, the iWAN suite of technologies will be officially tested and supported on the CSR1000v platform which means all of that functionality will now be available in public cloud environments. More to come on iWAN in another post.

CSR1000v

The CSR1000v (Cloud Services Router) is Cisco’s answer to a virtual router. Until now, it’s been sort of an “Oh ya? We can do that too” sort of project. Now it’s a full-fledged product with a dedicated product team. It’s supported across just about every public cloud provider and in every Cisco Powered Cloud partner (Cirrity, Peak 10, etc.).

Additionally, I managed to get the product team to pull back the covers on the roadmap a bit and reveal what Dynamic Multipoint VPN (DMVPN) will be supported on the CSR1000v soon along with a number of other ISR/ASR features which will make a truly seamless WAN that includes your public cloud resources.

Non-Cisco Cloud News – Azure Virtual Network now supports custom gateways

A big challenge in real adoption of non-Microsoft application workloads in Azure has been the inability to use anything but Azure’s gateway services at the edge of your Azure Virtual Network. Well, Cisco let the cat out of the bag on this one as Cisco CSR’s and ASR’s will soon be supported as gateway devices in Azure VN. For me, this really brings Azure into focus when selecting a public cloud partner.

APIC-EM has more uses than ever

Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller Enterprise Module (rolls right off the tongue right?), or APIC-EM, is Cisco’s answer to an SDN controller. It’s part of Cisco’s ONE software portfolio and has more uses than ever. Don’t confuse the APIC-EM with the ACI APIC, however. The ACI APIC is the controller and central point of interaction for Cisco’s ACI solution and runs on Cisco C-Series servers. The APIC-EM, however, is truly an open source SDN controller that is free and can run as a VM and interact with just about anything that has an API. That’s right.

VIRL got a facelift

Cisco’s Virtual Internet Routing Lab (VIRL) is getting some real attention. It’s an application that was unveiled to Cisco DevNet partners last year that lets you virtually build Cisco networks with VM’s running real IOS and NX-OS code to simulate a design and test it’s functionality. As a partner, this is huge as we can virtually replicate customer environments as a proof of concept or troubleshooting tool. It’s getting more development support within Cisco.

 

A lot of crucial information and updates came out of this event. If you would like to discuss any in more detail, feel free to reach out!

 

By Nick Phelps, Principal Architect

Cisco, Featured, Network Infrastructure, wireless

Cisco Live 2015 Recap: IoT, Digital Age, Wireless Updates & More!

The GreenPages/LogicsOne Team landed at Cisco Live last week and spent the days soaking up new tech, new trends, and developing a sense of where the market is headed with everything Cisco.

Digital Age Keynote

John Chambers gave an incredible keynote (and also took a picture with my colleague Nick Phelps! See below). He’s a very commanding speaker with a great vision. He highlighted that 90% of companies believe that they should become digital and that only 7% have a plan in their head on how to do so. That is our market in a bottle. In 10 years, it’s estimated that 40% of enterprise companies won’t exist anymore. In 1950 the average company had a run time of 45 years. In 2010 it was only 10 years. The reason? People feel that they need to keep doing what they have been doing, for doing’s sake. It’s time to step up and make change, disrupt, or run the risk of being disrupted.

 

cisco live

 

 

 

 

 

 

IoE/IoT

The Internet of Everything and Internet of Things was once again a big hit overall with people at Cisco Live. They estimate that of the 7 billion people on earth, 4 billion have cell phones, 3.5 billion have toothbrushes. That’s how badly people want apps, app based lifestyles, and apps with sensors. And, on average, there are 50,000 new apps launching every week. The Internet of Things emphasized the different ways to apply the concept of everyone being connected to spark a generation of ideas and how to solve modern problems. Everything from providing a demo, to configuring a train to detect and change a signal to prevent a hypothetical crash, to a walking stick recently developed to enable the blind to see and feel their surroundings by detecting an announced crosswalk, traffic light status, and the number of stairs ahead to the user.

Meraki

Meraki is getting some serious development and is growing like crazy! They are continuing to provide the 2 week and up to 6 week Proof of Concept demo, risk and cost free for any size deal, from a single access point to an entire site design of 50 devices including Aps, switches, and firewalls. Of these Try and Buy situations, 75% of customers keep and possibly buy more gear.

  • The MX/Firewall appliance has had limitations with VPN support in the past, but has been updated to support 3rd party VPN connections, a visual dashboard with VPN traffic usage visibility, and a topology mode. GreenPages can enable the customer to manage and rapidly deploy this multisite VPN firewall solution out to hundreds of locations.
  • Cisco is applying its iWAN portfolio to the Meraki MX Firewalls! Cisco Intelligent WAN (iWAN) is a collection of Cisco technologies that provide redundancy similar to an MPLS network without much of the cost. Meraki will soon be supporting dual-active path support for VPN, and with PfR (Performance Based Routing) and PbR (Policy Based Routing) a customer with 2 circuits can utilize VPN over both circuits at once without a load balancer, while allowing for intelligent link selection based on things like policy, latency, or loss.
  • SourceFire’s AMP is coming to the MX firewall as well! This incredible anti malware protection centralized at the network firewall gives great visibility into what files, both malicious and non-malicious, are passing through.
  • Cisco ISE (Integrated Services Engine) is now compatible with all Meraki devices in addition to the traditional Cisco product line like switches, routers, access points. ISE allows a customer to centrally apply a profile-detecting policy that rivals Microsoft Radius for port level wired, wireless, and VPN security access. Hundreds to thousands of access points, site core switches, and remote site firewalls in an enterprise environment can be updated from a single dashboard for agility and dynamic security.

 

Wireless

  • Cisco is soon introducing full Wave 2 AC Wireless. The upcoming 1902i and 2902i access points introduce a max speed of 2.3Gbps, and more incredibly, the introduction of MU-MIMO wireless technology.
  • 2.3Gbps is a big deal. Think about it, 90% of customer client machines connect using existing 1Gb cabling, or the latest wireless of 1.3Gb. This new wireless is twice as fast, it can make more sense to go wireless instead of cabling for clients at all.
  • MU-MIMO means Multiple User wireless. Wireless clients currently have to “share the air”, transmitting one at a time across channels. This can lead to bottlenecks, complex configurations, and having to choose between coverage or capacity. MU-MIMO allows multiple wireless clients to communicate over wireless channels at once, allowing the entire wireless spectrum to be consumed constantly, leading to much more highway for all those packets. Combine that with increased wireless transmission speed, and I feel confident saying that wireless could possibly disrupt physical cabling and introduce a wave of the “All Wireless Office”.

cisco live

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nbase T

  • With wireless AP’s capable of up to 2.3Gbps comes the need for faster cabling, but no one is going to want to spend the time or money recabling. Let’s face it; ethernet is the last cabling we’re going to pull. Introducing Nbase-T, 2 additional speeds of ethernet that run on the existing copper ethernet cabling customers have now and can perform 2.5Gbps or 5Gbps speeds. This has the potential to be huge to allow high density wireless with very limited cabling, complementing the new wireless AP’s high density capabilities.
  • Also, think big picture here. Think how the market is going to respond to this. Manufacturers are going to want to build network cards for client workstations capable of using the same ethernet cabling at 2.5x or 5x the speed. We could see a huge shift to the end of a static 1Gbps wired speed to the client, with a move to an auto-detecting 100Mb to 10Gb spectrum. (.1Gbps) – 1Gbps – 2.5Gbps – 5Gbps – 10Gbs infrastructure all over existing cabling! This will let us keep up with the high bandwidth demands of our applications both internal and external. There are some cabling distance limitations, a chart showing that info is below.

 cisco live

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overall, it was a great event. If you’d like to talk in more detail about news that came out of the event or how you can take advantage of any of them in your environment, reach out!

 

By Dan Allen, Architect

 

Cisco, Deutsche Telekom, Huawei, News & Analysis, Salesforce, SAP, T-Systems, Telco Cloud

Deutsche Telekom wants to double cloud revenues by 2018

Deutsche Telekom wants to bolster its cloud business

Deutsche Telekom wants to bolster its cloud business

Deutsche Telekom said this week aims to redouble efforts to beat out big IT incumbents in the increasingly lucrative cloud services segment. Through the telco’s IT-focused subsidiary it intends to double cloud revenues over the next three years.

The company said it wants to start generating upwards of two billion euros annually from cloud services by 2018, double what it says it currently pulls in.

“At Deutsche Telekom, we want to grow by more than 20 percent each year in the field of cloud platforms, and to become the leading provider for businesses in Europe,” said Ferri Abolhassan, head of the IT Division at T-Systems.

Last year revenues from cloud solutions, in particular private cloud services, increased double digits at the firm, Abolhassan explained. But with the battle for cloud revenue heating up with more traditional IT service providers and vendors the company needs to scale up its cloud activities both within and outside T-Systems.

“The market for services from the public cloud – infrastructure, platforms and applications – that can be accessed through the public Internet promises further growth. In conjunction with partners, Deutsche Telekom plans to pit itself more strongly against the Internet corporations Google and Amazon in future. To achieve this, the departments within Deutsche Telekom’s segments are now stepping up their cloud activities across the Group,” he said, adding that DT will also continue to try and differentiate on security.

Telco’s haven’t been the natural choice for enterprise IT professionals but over the past few years many like DT have stepped up their cloud strategies, a move which largely sees them both acquiring successful cloud incumbents and integrate them into their own operations – for instance Verizon’s acquisition of Terremark, or CenturyLink’s acquisition of Savvis – and using their existing commercial telecoms and managed services clients as direct channels.

Partnerships are also key in this segment and earlier this year DT announced a flurry of cloud-centric deals with Cisco, Huawei, SAP and Salesforce. That said, the move could be a sign DT will soon ramp up partnerships with other big cloud providers or ISVs – or head down the M&A route.

Channel, Cisco, InterCloud, Internet of Things, News & Analysis, Telco Cloud

Cisco beefs up Intercloud strategy

Cisco is bolstering its Intercloud programme by partnering with ISVs

Cisco is bolstering its Intercloud programme by partnering with ISVs

Cisco is bolstering its Intercloud strategy this week, announcing partnerships with 35 ISVs which the company said would help create and offer a wider range of cloud services based on Cisco infrastructure.

The company announced the impending launch of an Intercloud Marketplace that will be populated with apps certified to run on Intercloud infrastructure, due to go live in autumn this year.

Cisco said it is partnering with a range of commercial app and development companies including Apprenda, Active State and Docker to make their cloud developer environments work on the Intercloud platform.

The company is also partnering with big data solution providers including MapR, Hortonworks, Cloudera and the Apache Hadoop Community to offer hybrid cloud big data implementation support. Additionally, it said it would expose APIs to enable software-based control of networking and security, a move it claims will help developers create Internet of Things services more effectively.

Cisco’s Intercloud strategy has been somewhat of a slow burner, even by Cisco’s own estimates. The company has about 100 Intercloud customers and 65 partners globally, though last month Cisco chairman and chief executive John Chambers said the programme would pick up pace as it moved into “phase 2” of the Intercloud strategy, which is what the Marketplace is all about.

“The pieces that we were missing was how do you go into this new environment where each of these “public clouds in clouds” are separate? And you have to be on different vendors or different companies’ tech to have the ability to go into it. So what we’re looking at first is an architecture and it cements our relationships in service providers. And then it really comes through to how you monetise it over time,” he said at the time.

“This will just take time to monetize, but the effect we see indirectly is already huge when you talk about a Deutsche Telekom or a Telstra and our relationships with those.”