Ethan Group a Strategic Cisco InterCloud Provider, Cloud of Clouds.
CRN spoke to Ethan Group executive director Tony Geagea, who had just returned to Australia after signing off the Intercloud deal. He describes the platform as a “fantastic initiative" that would "set Cisco apart from other manufacturers and providers".
“From the corporate, enterprise and government perspective, I see it as very significant. I don't believe there is one true private and public cloud provider that addresses all of the concerns that our customers face and that has a global reach.
"There are providers in this country – that's why we exist – but there's no one provider that has the global reach that is a suitable option that addresses the real concerns: the business issues around data sovereignty, proper resiliency, enterprise-grade and transparency around infrastructure."
Geagea said that being part of Intercloud would allow Ethan's enterprise customers to "flexibly and freely move workloads and interoperate with our private environment, which we invested over $40 million building".
Cisco announced this week that the Intercloud now encompasses 250 new data centres in 50 countries.
The networking giant also revealed that US$1 billion has been “earmarked” for financing to be offered by Cisco Capital to customers and partners moving to Cisco clouds.
Cisco president of development and sales Rob Lloyd this week likened Cisco’s cloud strategy to the vendor’s involvement in networking decades ago.
“As we look ahead to the next 30 years at Cisco, we’ll look back on today as a milestone almost as significant as that day in 1984 when our founders helped two network islands talk to each other,” Lloyd wrote in a blog post.
