At the recent Cisco Live conference, industry experts and value-added resellers (VARs) explored the technology trends that are evolving the IT channel. Cloud, artificial intelligence, and machine learning were among the most talked-about of those trends. Cloud, in particular, was the focus of the Building Hybrid Data Centers with Cisco Cloud ACI and AWS session.
During the session, Matthew Liddle, Principle Solutions Architect with AWS and Adam Ozkan, Product Marketing Manager with Cisco, dove into cloud technology, what it means for businesses, and how the Cisco-AWS partnership benefits users.
Cisco Cloud Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) is a comprehensive solution that provides simplified operations, consistent policy management, and visibility across multiple on-premises data centers and public clouds or hybrid cloud environments. It supports data center automation and application agility across multi-cloud networks that offer flexibility, security, and a consistent policy model. The partnership with AWS allows ACI to be implemented anywhere. “This is one of the enablers for data centers that go where your data and storage is,” said Ozkan. The service can be used remotely, on-premises, or in the cloud.
“Nobody in the industry can do this with the same amount of governance, control and operational simplicity,” explained Ozkan. For Cisco, the goal was to offer ACI to expand the reach of existing applications to a larger user base, move to cloud-native to keep businesses competitive, and promote intelligent interactions. The offer includes “all those machine learning powers and artificial intelligence applications that reinvent customer experience,” explained Ozkan.
Many customers no longer have centralized data from these systems. It’s being distributed with hybrid cloud infrastructure, which is evolving at a quick rate and, therefore, can make security, compliance, and control a struggle. “There is no one-size-fits-all solution,” said Liddle. Lots of people are running into issues with governance and operations, but the cloud – and the Cisco-AWS partnership – can help alleviate these burdens.
When customers use Cisco Cloud ACI, they get the expertise of the IT channel from Cisco paired with data center excellence from AWS. “They get to follow new best practices and IT procedures. As they do that, they are building out more segregated workloads,” said Ozkan. With new roles established, companies can set themselves up to have strong security and policy for the cloud.
To hear more about Cisco ACI, click here.
