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Cisco Makes Infrastructure as a Service Move

Posted January 25th, 2010 by Joe Panettieri

After overhauling its managed services partner program in 2009, Cisco Systems is pushing into another new area: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The networking giant says it now has an IaaS offering for service providers that want to tackle computing-on-demand, network-on-demand and storage-on-demand. Here are some details.

Cisco says it’s “working with Service Providers to provide them with the tools, design guides and advanced services to be able to “fast-track” the implementation of IaaS offerings.” Cisco announced the IaaS effort in a blog, and pointed out:

Potential benefits for service providers , including consolidation through virtualization, infrastructure amortization, massive economic efficiencies, and the opening up of new markets.
Details behind the Cisco IaaS launch
Plus details about a Cisco IaaS ROI & Configuration Guidance Tool

I know: We all have our doubts about ROI tools and calculators. But we all seem to be hooked on them…

What Is IaaS?

As MSPmentor pointed out in September 2009, there are at least three types of cloud environments:

Software as a Service (SaaS): Focused on a specific application such as Salesforce.com, NetSuite or Canonical’s own Landscape
Platform as a Service (PaaS): Focused on an operating environment (such as Windows Azure) for deploying applications
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or GoGrid, IaaS manages all the hardware so that you can scale up operating systems and applications at a moment’s notice.

I don’t believe Cisco is going to launch its own IaaS cloud. Rather, Cisco’s goal is to arm service providers with OPEX equipment for their IaaS initiatives.

Cisco’s IaaS effort is part of a broader service provider push at Cisco. The company in September 2009 overhauled its MSP partner program — which now seems to be gaining momentum.