Cisco Systems (CSCO) will kill its InterCloud public cloud offering in March 2017, the networking company has confirmed. The move is hardly surprising considering InterCloud, based on OpenStack, failed to make a dent against Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.
Cisco is the latest in a growing list of hardware vendors, software companies and telcos to abandon dedicated public cloud efforts. Others to kill their public clouds include:
- Dell Technologies (before the company acquired EMC) and HP Enterprise (before the breakup from HP Inc.).
- In the telco arena, both CenturyLink and Verizon Communications have sold off their data center businesses to focus on network-centric services.
- In hosting services, Rackspace largely quick on public cloud services to focus on managed services for AWS and Azure.
- In software, VMware recently pivoted away from its solo cloud effort to announced VMware Cloud on AWS.
Now, Cisco is the latest to call it quits. According to The Register, an email from Kip Compton, VP of Cisco Cloud Platform and Services, stated:
“Today we are taking an important step to better align our resources so that we are well positioned to execute on Cisco’s Cloud Strategy. Effective March 31, 2017, the CIS multi-tenant hosting platform will be shut down and all tenants fully migrated to other platforms.”
The Register did not confirmed which third-party platforms would be involved. Cisco downplayed The Register report, pointing out that the networking has been shifting toward cloud management for quite some time.
Cisco Recurring Revenues
The original InterCloud strategy was largely the work of former Cisco President Rob Lloyd, who exited the company as Chuck Robbins succeeded John Chambers as CEO. Lloyd moved on to join Hyperloop Technologies as CEO in 2015.
Despite InterCloud's apparent demise, Cisco has a range of additional cloud and recurring revenue services. In Cisco's most recent quarter, the portion of product deferred revenue related to recurring and subscription businesses grew 48%, Cisco said. In other words, Cisco’s SaaS-based businesses and OpEx deals are growing quickly.
Also, Cisco recently unveiled FindIT, a remote monitoring platform to help MSPs manage small business customer networks.
