As Microsoft aggressively drives it cloud message forward before thousands of its partners, the company announced its data centers will benefit from a newly cemented agreement with Cisco in which the two companies will work to integrate their hardware and software into data centers through marketing and engineering.
The pair of AllSeen Alliance members reportedly came to terms on a three-year agreement in which they'll push Cisco's Unified Computing System servers, Cisco's Nexus series of network switches and Microsoft's line of cloud operating systems to achieve better integration in data centers.
With many organizations expressing timidity in migrating to cloud platforms, Frank Palumbo, senior VP for Cisco's global data center and virtualization sales, said the three-year deal would fast-track enterprise customers and service providers on their way into the cloud.
"From innovative technologies and global brands to specialized channel partners, Cisco and Microsoft have the ingredients to transform the traditional data center," said Palumbo. "Now we're expanding our long-standing technical partnership with Microsoft with an aggressive global go-to-market and sales initiative.
Microsoft and Cisco's efforts will be focused on the U.S., Canada, the UK, Germany, France and Australia during the first year of their agreement and will expand from there. One of the first projects under the agreement will be the assisted migration of clients from Windows 2003 onto Windows 2012 R2, which has been optimized for Cisco's UCS servers.
Microsoft joined Cisco and 49 other members on July 2 in the AllSeen Alliance, a consortium that has been working to promote the Internet of Things. Cisco and Microsoft's latest agreement was in the spirit of the Allseen Alliance, in which members work together to develop a universal language for hardware, as Microsoft continues to promote interoperability across the board.
At Microsoft's 2014 Worldwide Partners Conference this week in Washington, D.C., its presenters continued the company's push to interoperability between different vendors of hardware and software. Phil Sorgen, Microsoft's corporate vice president who runs the Worldwide Partner Group, said Microsoft has been working to ensure that its cloud services are available on-site at clients' facilities and in hybridized formats, instead of being restricted to its public cloud.
"We're working across the industry to ensure that if customers are using other vendors' technology, they can do that in our cloud as well," stated Sorgen. "And you can all leverage our platforms and solutions to deliver exactly what your customers want: a complete solution delivered where they want to be."
Microsoft and Cisco have aligned themselves in the past, well before Microsoft joined the AllSeen Alliance. Roughly a year ago at WPC 2013, Microsoft and Cisco announced a partnership to spur the roll out of private and hybrid cloud services.
