Mike Sapien, Principal Analyst, Enterprise Practice, Jens Butler, Principal Analyst, IT Services

Cisco has announced its creation of a global cloud platform, branded Intercloud. It has also named some of its initial partners, which include a variety of cloud infrastructure players: Telstra, Allstream, Canopy, Ingram Micro, Logicalis Group, MicroStrategy, OnX Managed Services, SunGard Availability Services and Wipro. Although it is not a large group, it does include a mix of telcos, managed services providers, IT services providers, distributors, and resellers. As you would expect, they all have longstanding relationships with Cisco and were developing cloud services independently prior to this announcement.

Cloud services will become part of the Cisco Powered program, and Cisco plans to sell them through its channel partners and directly to enterprise customers. These cloud services will be more complex than those that Cisco sells today. This is not Cisco’s first attempt at providing global cloud …