Cisco’s Future Cloud reveals new hybrid cloud compute platform for DX

 Cisco announced new ways it is helping customers accelerate digital transformations as they move more resources to the cloud.

The hyper-connected, distributed world we live in now relies on cloud more than ever, and IT teams are facing challenges to provide people with optimal digital experiences wherever and whenever they need access. As a result, businesses are migrating to a cloud-driven operational model based on speed, insight, and control to bridge the greater distribution of applications, users, and tech staff.

Enabling customers to realize better outcomes from the cloud

Cisco has made multibillion-dollar investments over the past six years to build cloud into every aspect of its business, focusing on helping customers develop complete cloud strategies with confidence across five key areas: Continuity, Insights, Security, Connectivity, and Operations.

During today’s virtual ‘Future Cloud’ event, the company will showcase how it is advancing its cloud strategy across several of these areas to help businesses connect, secure, and automate to deliver seamless digital experiences in today’s hybrid cloud world.

“User experience is key to success in a digital world,” said Todd Nightingale, SVP and GM, Enterprise Networking and Cloud, Cisco. “We are focused on empowering technology groups to securely deliver the best possible application experiences. Only Cisco can power the hybrid-cloud solutions, observability, insights and automation necessary to be truly cloud smart.”

New hybrid cloud innovations announced today include:

• Hybrid Cloud Operations:
  • Introducing the new Cisco UCS X-Series: Cisco’s Unified Computing System™ (UCS) is used in data centers by more than 50,000 customers worldwide. Fully integrated with Cisco Intersight, UCS X-Series is a first-of-its-kind system designed for hybrid operations from the cloud and across the clouds. Blending the best of rack and blade systems and featuring revolutionary UCS X-Fabric technology, it’s built for workload versatility today and comes future-ready for the next decade of industry innovation in processors, accelerators, and computing interconnects.
  • Intersight Cloud Orchestrator: Provides a low-code, easy-to-use automation framework that simplifies complex workflows, so IT Ops can easily orchestrate infrastructure and workloads and accelerate delivery of services.
  • Intersight Workload Engine: A powerful platform for modern, cloud native workloads. Built on an open-source Kubernetes and Kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) foundation using container-native virtualization, Intersight Workload Engine is a Cisco operating system for HyperFlex™, featuring consistent SaaS management.
  • Cisco Service Mesh Manager: A new extension to the Intersight Kubernetes Service, bringing deep observability and simplified management with policy-based security and intuitive visualization of services topologies across K8s clusters on-prem and in the cloud.
  • Cisco Cloud ACI: Available on AWS, Azure, and now on Google Cloud with general availability in the Fall of 2021. The Cloud ACI® common policy and operating model drastically reduces the cost and complexity of managing hybrid and multicloud deployments.

 "As organizations increasingly rely on cloud applications sitting in multiple clouds, operating these hybrid IT environments becomes overwhelmingly complex. IT teams must monitor and optimize application experiences, working alongside developers. IT executives should view Cisco’s latest hybrid cloud innovations as a bold effort to position the company as a cloud-neutral enabler for businesses and addressing customers' challenges by providing hybrid cloud solutions that help make it easier to execute their cloud strategies," said  Stephen Elliot, Program Vice President, I&O, Cloud Operations, and DevOps, IDC.