To better compete in a rapidly evolving marketplace, companies are turning to the cloud and making applications the lifeblood of their business. The pressure to innovate has never been greater. This is one of the biggest IT transformations of our generation.

New and emerging technologies are changing the game and making it easier for businesses to develop and deploy applications across a mix of data centers and clouds. Containers and microservices are creating new potential. Open source technologies, such as Kubernetes and Istio, both developed at Google, are key catalysts in driving the next generation of application development.

Hybrid cloud is the new reality; organizations need to leverage capabilities in the cloud and in their data centers. They want to develop, operate, and manage their traditional and cloud-native applications and workloads across multiple private and public cloud environments. This can result in a fragmented environment, where application developers and IT professionals have to contend with operating across multiple siloed environments, technologies, teams, and vendors.

Giving Customers Freedom and Security

This week at Cisco Live, we are showing how Cisco and Google Cloud are tackling these problems head on to give customers the freedom to develop and deploy applications securely, across their on-premises data centers and Google Cloud. We are collaborating on an open, hybrid cloud architecture that lets businesses and their IT teams get cloud-powered agility and innovation without sacrificing IT security and control. By bridging the technology silos that exist between IT operations teams and developers, customers can drive business innovation, and get the most from their existing legacy application investments and cloud-native tools. This partnership allows customers to take advantage of the best that Google Cloud and Cisco have to offer.

Delivering on the Promise

It's been less than a year since we announced our partnership with Google and our efforts have already delivered some great solutions for customers. The Cisco Container Platform and Cisco CloudCenter for Kubernetes are both core components of our joint hybrid cloud solution. The Cisco team has worked closely with the Google Kubernetes Engine team to ensure that the solution is an integrated experience for customers, building applications across environments seamlessly. Cisco has also been contributing to the Kubernetes and Istio open source projects, where Google has played a significant leadership role. We have been testing the solution with select customers and partners around the world in a variety of industries. There's been a tremendous amount of early enthusiasm from prospective customers, developers, and our joint partner ecosystem. Some early use cases include IoT, Dev/Test and distributed computing at the edge. Cisco DevNet has also created an online resource - the Cisco and Google Cloud Developer Center - to provide developers with the tools to explore open source technologies such as Kubernetes and Istio, and get hands-on with hybrid cloud solutions. We're looking forward to making the solution generally available later this year.

We know the technology solution is just one part of what businesses need. We're working with Google Cloud and the rest of our entire partner ecosystem to ensure that businesses are able to take advantage of the solution, whether they need training, integration, development, or other capabilities.

We look forward to bringing this innovative solution to market later this year. We can't wait to show you more!

For more information view the Cisco Hybrid Cloud Platform for Google Cloud website.