Cisco partners with AWS to provide companies with hybrid cloud solutions for Kubernetes on AWS, available next month
- The collaboration is meant to simplify the deployment of applications on Amazon's cloud or in corporate data centers. — Cisco and other traditional data center companies …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is Cisco's second hyperscaler alliance in about a year: it already partnered with Google in October 2017 to pair Google's software expertise with Cisco's global salesforce and security reach (Google-Cisco cloud partnership). The new AWS deal extends the same playbook to the market leader, targeting companies that want to run Kubernetes workloads both on Amazon's cloud and in their own data centers.
AWS set the stage itself by making Kubernetes a first-class citizen — first support on top of ECS in late 2017, then the general release of Amazon EKS in June 2018 (EKS general availability). With the container layer standardized, AWS can now recruit on-premises incumbents like Cisco the way it already did with VMware, whose Cloud for AWS offering reached European customers earlier in 2018 (VMware Cloud for AWS expansion).
First-order effects
- Enterprise customers get a Cisco-supported path to deploy Kubernetes applications identically on AWS or in corporate data centers starting next month, with Cisco's salesforce and support organization carrying the offering.
Second-order effects
- VMware's AWS partnership loses its position as the default on-prem-to-AWS bridge, forcing it to differentiate on virtualization management rather than being the sole incumbent channel into AWS.
- Cisco's Google partnership now looks like a hedge rather than an exclusive bet — Google must compete with AWS for the same Cisco distribution muscle it was promised.
Third-order effects
- If hyperscalers keep co-opting data-center vendors one by one, Kubernetes hardens into the industry's portability layer, eroding the boundary between cloud and on-premises and turning former rivals like Cisco into paid distribution for AWS.
The trend: Hyperscalers are absorbing legacy infrastructure vendors as hybrid-cloud channels, with Kubernetes emerging as the neutral abstraction that makes those partnerships technically possible.