Strategic partnerships were the name of the game in the managed services space this week. Some very big service providers are changing their strategies and throwing in with former competitors as the cloud and hosted services space continues to evolve and take shape.
Cisco topped the headlines with a major boost to its Intercloud initiative, announcing it had added more than 30 new partners and 250 data centers in 50 countries to its growing network. Intercloud is comprised of a vast network of clouds and is geared toward promoting a secure hybrid cloud environment as well as the standardization of cloud applications. New carriers and colocation providers working with Cisco include BT, Deutsche Telecom, Equinix and NTT Data.
Cisco also expanded its Evolved Services Platform this week, adding managed cloud VPN and security services. The virtualization and orchestration platform is targeted at MSPs, enabling them to offer virtualized and automated business services to the SMB market. The platform uses SDN and NFV technologies as well as multi-vendor orchestration and provisioning to help MSPs save on operational costs.
AT&T announced a partnership with former cloud competitor AWS this week, offering a secure path to the AWS Cloud through its NetBond connection service. The solution lets enterprise customers dynamically adjust their connections to the cloud as demands change, providing a secure private path to AWS. NetBond also enables connectivity to Microsoft Azure, Salesforce.com, IBM, CSC and Equinix clouds as well as AT&T’s own private cloud offering.
Rackspace is expanding its managed cloud services portfolio through a partnership agreement with Arrow Electronics for the U.S. and Canada. Arrow is giving its service provider partners access to Rackspace’s reseller program and incentives, while Rackspace will benefit from wider distribution of its managed cloud services. Offerings are available to MSPs and ISVs through Arrow’s ArrowSphere platform, enabling them to select a variety of cloud services through a single portal.
And CloudLink Technologies and EMC teamed up this week, integrating CloudLink SecureVSA data security technology with the RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines solution from EMC. The combined offering gives MSPs a secure DRaaS solution they may offer their customers as a value-added service.
