While this story was announced on the Wall Street Journal to the outside world, for those of us in the channel the news that Cisco plans to develop its own cloud computing service offering to enterprise customers should not be a surprise.
Cisco executives have been attending MSPWorld and MSPAlliance events for the last few years, talking to MSPs about the future of cloud and the role MSPs would play in that world. It seems that Cisco has made some decisions based on those conversations.
Named Cisco Cloud Services, the new cloud offering will be constructed over the next 1-2 years. Cisco says it will invest roughly $1 billion in this initiative aimed at corporate customers. Specifics about the type of cloud services to be offered and the precise manner in which they will be offered are still unclear.
Cisco Cloud Services and the MSP Channel?
Sure, Cisco wants to offset any slow downs in hardware sales by getting into services but there are larger issues at stake here for the MSP channel. Cisco could play a very important role, similar to the role IBM is carving out for itself, in terms of enabling MSPs to be private and hybrid cloud providers.
Vendors like Amazon and Microsoft are fairly predictable in their approach to the channel; these cloud vendors want more MSPs to use their existing technology to deliver services. Companies like IBM and Cisco have the opportunity to offer similar end results, with the notable exception that the cloud services would be developed on infrastructure which is more closely controlled and managed by the MSP.
I hope, for the sake of MSPs everywhere, that Cisco will leverage the MSP channel in this new cloud endeavor. Because Cisco has a lot of experience as a channel company, I would say that is the best guess of what will happen. If, on the other hand, Cisco wants to use the cloud as a means of circumventing the channel, then I fear the MSP community will not respond favorably to this initiative.