Data Backup Digest

In a move that was largely unexpected by mainstream consumers, Cisco has recently unveiled a partnership with the object storage provider SwiftStack. An open-source project by its very nature, SwiftStack will work with Cisco to present a turnkey solution for the development of enterprise-specific cloud storage functionality. Moreover, the solution achieves this by utilizing the on-premise servers and data centers that are already present.

Alan Waldman, vice president of product development with Cisco, spoke about the new partnership with SwiftStack in a recent blog post. He was quoted as saying: "Cisco is working with SwiftStack to provide enterprises with a low-risk solution for scaling compute and storage on-premises for unstructured data workloads, as well as new storage consumption models for the Internet of Things."

SwiftStack 4.0, the latest iteration of the Swift framework, will be made available to consumers via the Cisco Metapod. Although Metapod has been functioning as private cloud software, the new partnership will effectively transform Cisco's Metapod into a hybrid cloud solution.

Mario Blandini, vice president of marketing with SwiftStack, was enthusiastic about the future possibilities of the partnership. He stated: "Users often times find software-defined storage product (to be) complex and hard to understand. The choice to use any server is one big benefit of software-defined storage, but there are customers that prefer to consume it as an all-in-solution. The Cisco UCS is a great form factor for our object software to reside."

Forging New Partnerships

This isn't the first time Cisco has reached out to an industry peer in an attempt to cultivate a long-term and successful partnership. In fact, they've recently joined forces with Salesforce on an IoT-based initiative as well as the team with Apple, where they've teamed up to streamline Cisco accessibility on iOS 10. Other new partners include Ericsson, Barrick Gold, Telstra and more.

Despite the fact that Cisco is increasingly seeking out new partners, their alliance with SwiftStack marks the first time they've joined up with a third-party object storage provider. If successful, the move is expected to bolster profitability on behalf of both Cisco and SwiftStack.

Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco, explained his company's latest efforts in forging new partnerships. He was quoted as saying: "Our commitment is still to these partnerships because I believe that's what our customers would like to see us do. At any point in the future, if the customer feedback is that we need to do something differently, then we'll take that assessment and look at it. But right now I think we're very pleased and the partnership model seems to be working."

As you can see, Cisco has no plans of putting an end to their latest partnership recruitment efforts. While nobody can predict what future relationships may come as a result of their highly proactive tactics, nobody can deny the amount of success they've experienced thus far. If history is any indication, we can expect them to continue moving forward for years, and possibly even decades, to come.

For more information about Cisco, please visit their official website at www.cisco.com.