Cisco and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are partnering up to offer enterprise customers an integrated platform that promises to help them build, secure, and connect Kubernetes clusters across private data centers and the AWS cloud more easily.
“The new package, Cisco Hybrid Solution for Kubernetes on AWS, combines Cisco, AWS and open-source technologies to simplify complexity and helps eliminate challenges for customers who use Kubernetes to enable deploying applications on premises and across the AWS cloud in a secure, consistent manner,” said David Cope, Senior Director of Cisco Cloud Platform & Solutions Group (CPSG).
“The significance of Amazon teaming with Cisco means more integration between product lines from AWS and Cisco, thus reducing the integration costs notably on the security and management fronts for joint customers,” said Stephen Elliot, program vice president with IDC. “It also provides customers with some ideas on how to migrate workloads from private to public clouds.”
In a blog post outlining the technical details of the new package, Reinhardt Quelle a principal architect in Cisco’s CPSG, wrote that the hybrid solution integrates Cisco Container Platform (CCP) and Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (EKS), so customers can provision clusters on premises and on EKS in the cloud. Cisco introduced its Kubernetes-based CCP in January and said it allows for self-service deployment and management of container clusters.
“More customers run containers on AWS and Kubernetes on AWS than anywhere else,” said Terry Wise, Global Vice President of Channels & Alliances, Amazon Web Services, in a statement. “Our customers want solutions that are designed for the cloud, and Cisco’s integration with Amazon EKS will make it easier for them to rapidly deploy and run containerized applications across both Cisco-based on-premises environments and the AWS cloud.”
“Cisco is really focused on … helping their customers understand where Cisco fits in the multi-cloud world. Just about every Cisco and AWS enterprise account uses Kubernetes,” Elliot said. “This is a great anchor to help customers navigate the complexities of Kubernetes deployments while solving some of the common management and security challenges that Kubernetes presents.”
The largest challenge for Cisco is expanding its footprint into new buying centers within IT, notable developers. “AWS has a strong developer footprint, Cisco (and its channels) generally do not. Reaching this prickly audience is not impossible but hard to do. They will need to invest in sales training and marketing. The good news is Cisco has been extending its reach into new IT buying centers for the last five years,” Elliot said.
The Cisco Hybrid Solution for Kubernetes on AWS will be made available in December 2018. It will be offered as a software-only solution, requiring only the Cisco Container Platform, or a hardware/software package with the Cisco Container Platform running on Cisco HyperFlex. The software is licensed in one, three and five-year subscriptions. Pricing for software-only subscriptions will start at approximately $65,000 per year for a typical entry-level configuration.
