Google and Cisco Strike Cloud Partnership
October 25 2017 - 8:29AM
Dow Jones News
By Rachael King
Google and Cisco Systems Inc. on Wednesday said they are
combining their technology to help corporate customers more easily
develop software for the cloud.
The two companies need a boost in the corporate computing market
amid increasing competition from cloud-computing pioneer Amazon.com
Inc. and corporate-tech veteran Microsoft Corp.
Much like how Google's Android makes it possible to run mobile
apps on a variety of smartphones and devices, the two companies'
software will make it possible for businesses to create apps that
run in their own data centers and on Google's servers, creating a
so-called hybrid cloud. Until recently, big cloud providers were
like walled gardens and different tools were used to create code
for private data centers.
Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., is contributing
cloud-development expertise and tools that run on the Google Cloud
Platform, a suite of services for the cloud including computing,
storage, databases and analytics. Cisco is bringing networking,
security and infrastructure technologies to the mix. Both companies
are using open-source technologies to give customers more
flexibility.
"It really does help companies avoid lock-in," Cisco Chief
Executive Chuck Robbins said in an interview.
Mr. Robbins is counting on new cloud services to help turn
around Cisco by moving further away from its legacy hardware.
Cisco's customers are increasingly using cloud services instead of
investing in hardware for their own data centers.
Google Cloud Chief Executive Diane Greene is leading the company
on an uphill battle in the market for corporate computing power and
storage accessed online. While Google is an internet giant, it is a
relatively small player in business computing, ranking fourth in
cloud infrastructure services in 2016 with only 2.3% market share,
according to a September report from research firm Gartner Inc.
The two companies have been working together for much of the
past year developing software and working with corporate customers
on requirements, Ms. Greene said. "A partnership takes off when the
engineers work well together," she said.
The two companies plan to offer early access for a few customers
in the first half of 2018. The software will be more widely
available in the second half of next year, said Ms. Greene.
Google is trying to attract corporate customers using its
cloud-development expertise and popular software that was initially
developed to manage its own search engine. Cisco has relationships
with large corporate customers forged over decades along with
expertise in so-called hyperconverged systems that combine
computing, storage and networking.
The partnership is similar in some respects to the way in which
Cisco rival Dell Technologies Inc. works with corporate customers
such as General Electric Co. and Ford Motor Co. to build cloud
software. Dell's unit, Pivotal, makes it easier for companies to
get started developing software, acting like an operating system
for the cloud.
Dell uses Pivotal as an entry point to selling more products and
services. In much the same way, the new software would help Cisco
sell more of its hyperconverged products, while Google could sell
more cloud-computing services.
"Cloud is no longer about cheaper servers and storage, it's
about turning great ideas into software faster," said Dave
Bartoletti, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester
Research Inc.
Write to Rachael King at rachael.king@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 25, 2017 08:14 ET (12:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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