By Don Clark
Many technology vendors offer cloud-style computing services for
businesses. Cisco Systems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are among them,
but the two technology majors also want to sell to other cloud
providers.
The companies, which agreed in July to market technology jointly
to corporate data centers, plan to announce Wednesday an extension
of that effort aimed at telecommunication carriers and other cloud
providers.
They plan to offer Cisco networking devices and servers as well
as Microsoft Windows Azure Pack, a collection of software designed
to let carriers and other customers offer services akin to
Microsoft Azure.
The companies said one driver of their collaboration was a
recognition that many companies are wedded to applications based on
Microsoft's Windows operating system, despite the rise in recent
years of open-source alternatives and other competing strains of
software development.
Those customers are "a big community," said Robert Lloyd,
Cisco's president of development and sales. "It's the lion's share
of business applications and in many cases government
applications."
Cisco and Microsoft said companies that run Windows-based
programs in their own data centers also want the option to exploit
offerings by service providers that serve Windows applications
remotely--a model sometimes called the hybrid cloud.
"We are enabling service providers to provide the hybrid cloud,"
said Aziz Benmalek, general manager of Microsoft's hosting service
provider business.
The two companies chose to cooperate despite competition in
areas such as online communication and collaboration services, a
market where Cisco offers WebEx and Microsoft has services
including Lync and Skype. But in other respects their businesses
and cloud strategies differ.
Microsoft, in addition to its longtime stronghold in software
that runs on personal computers, competes with Amazon.com Inc.,
Google Inc. and others to run other companies' applications in its
data centers. It also offers online versions of popular desktop
programs like Office.
Cisco also offers some of its own cloud services. But it puts
much greater emphasis on a network of other companies' cloud
services, a model Cisco calls the Intercloud. Besides selling
hardware to such companies, Cisco wants to help potential customers
find and choose among them.
"You will see us build the world's largest marketplace of
relevant cloud services," Mr. Lloyd said.
The latest collaboration has similarities to Cisco's
partnerships with other big technology companies, such as EMC Corp.
and International Business Machines Corp., to offer bundles of
hardware and software.
In addition to the pact with Microsoft, Cisco plans to announce
Wednesday that 14 more cloud providers are joining its Intercloud
network, bringing the total to 60.
Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com
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