Aussie resellers divulge their Cisco Intercloud plans

Australian resellers that have signed up to Cisco's Intercloud have shed light on how they plan to profit from the multibillion-dollar platform.

They anticipate the potential to share workloads with providers in other countries, the opportunity to broker cloud services and the ability to extend their reach through Cisco’s channel.

New Intercloud partners include Data#3, Ethan Group and Infront, which join Telstra and Dimension Data in the program.

Infront chief executive Allan King wants the Canberra-based services provider to act as an Intercloud broker. Unlike Telstra and Dimension Data, Infront won’t be providing Intercloud-connected data hosting facilities itself. Rather, using an algorithm – or “brokerage decision engine” – Infront’s platform will analyse workloads and determine the appropriate service provider to host it.

The vision is to offer enterprise customers transparency when they consume cloud services, independently of platform or provider.

“I think enterprises want choice," he said "Not all workloads will exist in the cloud. Those that should, they want the ability to leverage those resources but not be bound to them."

"If they want to run AWS and they want to run IBM Softlayer, Azure and in the future Google, Telstra, why can’t they do it all?" King said.

In managing cloud usage, he said the goal would be to help businesses avoid "sticker shock" or compliance issues. The system will govern workloads though cost, policy-based control and data analytics. A governance framework will allow customers to access many service providers from a single aggregated point of view. Rather than have four or five contracts, these will be aggregated into one.

“The biggest challenge we’ve got for enterprise is that consuming cloud services has to be transparent. I need the ability to have a continuous monitoring platform regardless of whether it’s on premise or off premise,” said King.

Meanwhile, Ethan Group executive director Tony Geagea says Intercloud allows the provider to deliver hybrid services in a much more “elegant” way.

“It gives customers the autonomy to select to how they burst out and where do they burst out to. Their right word is 'freedom'. It gives them the right balance of hybrid cloud.”

For Geagea, the move is also about maximising Ethan’s private coud – the company has invested around $40 million in a platform built on Cisco-approved architecture.

As with Infront, the goal is for a true, single enterprise portal.

“This is the brokerage ecosystem, the orchestration system: giving customer a single-pane-of-glass view into their environment where they can manage not just workloads but any application they are leveraging,” said Geagea.

On the hosting side of the equation, Telstra now has a Cisco Cloud Services (CCS) node in its data centre – an instance of Cisco’s Openstack-based cloud. It fits into a portfolio at Telstra that includes co-location, privately managed cloud, VMware-based utility cloud services, a SaaS portfolio that include Office 365 and security solutions, backup and hosted collaboration using Exchange and Lync, and telecommunications access.

One potential benefit for Telstra will be in its business as a global services provider. Customers expanding overseas will be able to use Telstra to take advantage of Intercloud partners in other countries, said Telstra’s executive director of cloud, Erez Yarkon.

In this scenario, customers would be able to move into other geographies without necessarily searching for a separate cloud provider, setting up new commercial arrangements or redeploying workloads. Yarkon likened it to a mobile roaming agreement.

“Let’s say they are expanding to Germany. Part of this is making sure that workload of our customer can run in [the German provider’s environment] but Telstra would still be billing the customer and Telstra will be paying [the German provider] for that capacity on behalf of the customer. You’re collapsing not just the technology, you’re also collapsing the entire commercial complexity,” Yarkon explained.

Also throwing its weight behind the infrastructure behind Intercloud is Dimension Data. The move will mean more choice for customers, said Peter Prowse, general manager of Dimension Data Australia’s Data Centre Business Unit.

“The beauty of Intercloud for Dimension Data is that ability to span both public and private clouds in an exchange and gives our customers greater choice than the global deployment of managed cloud platforms that Dimension Data provides today,” Prowse said. "They are able to consume IT assets, both off-premise and on-premise, in a consumption model, linked via Intercloud."

Cisco's Intercloud push also stands to give Dimension Data a considerable boost to the market for its infrastructure, with its cloud platform to be resold by Cisco and Cisco’s partner community. Cisco and its partners will sell two Hybrid Cloud Solution bundles, made up of combinations of Cisco UCS, UCS Director, Cisco Cloud Fabric and a public IaaS subscription - using Dimension Data's infrastructure.

Like other infrastructure providers CRN spoke to, Prowse played down the cost of involvement, saying the company’s cloud platform was already Cisco powered and required very few changes.

Cisco will announce a number of other partners “imminently”, said Cisco ANZ director of cloud strategy, Sam Gerner. They include telecommunications and integration partners and traditional resellers. Gerner claimed there is a large appetite among two-tier partners to resell provider clouds.

“They might not be able to build their own cloud capability, but they’re finding they’re still able to add value in the Intercloud ecosystem by working with some of our Intercloud providers,” he said.

Australia will be one of the most intensive nurseries in the world for Intercloud, according to Gerner.

“It’s all happening here. Whether it’s Equinix, whether it’s Telstra, whether it’s Dimension Data, whether it’s Ethan – every single model Cisco is exploring and deploying is happening in Australia.”