Cisco is to invest $1 billion (£605 million, AU$1.1 billion) to build what it says will be the world's largest Intercloud network to tackle the Internet of Everything.
The two-year investment will see Cisco and its partners develop an open network of clouds with APIs for rapid application development to serve the enterprise market.
The Intercloud will be OpenStack-enabled and will use Cisco's Application Centric Infrastructure to optimise performance and help roll out services faster.
The aim is to offer network and security architecture to allow high performance workloads, real-time analytics, wide scalability, and full compliance with local data laws.
Everyone and everything
Cisco's investment is only part of the process. It expects additional investment from partners like Telstra, Allstream, Canopy, Atos, Ingram Micro, Logicalis, MicroStrategy, OnX Managed Services, SunGard, and Wipro.
The partnership will take advantage of the growing Internet of Everything market, which Cisco expects to be worth $19 trillion (£11.5 trillion, AU$20.8 trillion) in the coming decade.
"Customers, providers and channel partners alike are turning to Cisco to create open and highly secure hybrid cloud environments, and they want to rapidly deploy valuable enterprise-class cloud experiences for key customers – all while mitigating the risk of capital investment," said Robert Lloyd, president of development and sales at Cisco.
