Cisco Systems’ decision to enter the cloud market isn’t a sign that it will go head-to-head with the sector’s current leaders, the company’s head of development says.
Rob Lloyd, who is also president of sales for the networking giant, cited Amazon Web Services as an example when he said that new plans to invest $1 billion in the technology won’t necessarily see it become a direct competitor to its peers.
According to techweekeurope.co.uk, the company’s strategy will revolve around using the cloud to develop data centres. These will also rely on the infrastructure of Cisco’s partners.
Australian telecoms firm Telstra is one of the first companies to confirm it will be working with Cisco to offer the cloud services alongside its own internet packages.
Telstra’s executive director for cloud services, Erez Yarkoni, was quoted by convergedigest.com as saying: “Our customers will now have the choice of cloud infrastructure from global leaders, allowing them to select the cloud service to meet their requirements and scale network and cloud resources to deliver service agility, security and performance.”
It is thought that Cisco is looking to gradually move away from its networking roots by capitalising on a growing trend for businesses to hire IT services instead of purchasing and maintaining their own hardware.
