Cisco, Amazon offer cloud service that should frustrate Google, VMware

AWS CEO Andy Jassy
REUTERS/Mike Blake

• Cisco and Amazon
  Web Services have announced a new cloud product that
  enterprises will likely love.
• But it should cause some heartburn for AWS’s competitor
  Google Cloud.
• And it will likely frustrate Cisco’s competitor VMware, too.
• This new product lets companies run cloud apps on their own
  data centers or in the cloud while stamping firmly on Google’s
  and VMware’s toes.

Cisco and Amazon
Web Services have announced a new cloud product that
enterprises will likely love but should cause some heartburn for
AWS’s competitor Google Cloud, and Cisco’s competitor VMware.

Cisco’s product, known with the tongue-twister name of “Cisco
Hybrid Solution for Kubernetes on AWS “ will
allow companies to easily move their cloud apps between their own
data centers and AWS. Using both a private data center and a
cloud is known as “hybrid computing.”

This service focuses on a particularly hot area of cloud
computing known as Kubernetes, a technology created by
Google.

Cloud apps typically use a technology called “containers” which
makes sure that the app doesn’t break if something changes with
the cloud setup, or as the app is moved from one area of a cloud
to another. Kubernetes helps companies manage thousands of
containers as those companies put more of their apps in the
cloud.

Read: Two software companies, fed up with Amazon, Alibaba and
other big cloud players, have a controversial new plan to fight
back

But the truly interesting part of this announcement isn’t so much
the technology. It’s the stake in the ground that Cisco and AWS
have planted with it.

Cisco is one of those companies that could have been another IBM
— a victim of the rise of cloud computing, in which companies
don’t need to buy servers, storage and networks to run their
apps, renting it all from the cloud provider. But under CEO Chuck
Robbins, Cisco is offering more and more cloud products, getting
in on the recurring software revenues that cloud services
provide.

AWS scores big

This isn’t the first partnership between Cisco and AWS. Cisco has
been selling networking software that does many of the functions
of a hardware router on AWS for a few years now.

But, a year ago, Cisco partnered with Google to create network
software for Google Cloud. Google created Kubernetes and then
gave it away as a free and open source software project. Google
uses its expertise with Kubernetes as one of its selling points
to get customers to use its cloud.

That joint product with Cisco became available for Google’s
customers to use about a month ago. What does it do? Among other
things, it lets
companies do hybrid computing for apps using
Kubernetes.  

Chuck
Robbins
Cisco Live/Business
Insider

So by offering a similar service on AWS, score one for AWS.

“This is a win for AWS as many of the Cisco management
tools are involved in this partnership, notably Cisco
Appdynamics, is a leading tool in the market,” says Stephen
Elliot, a vice president for market researcher IDC.

Cisco’s AWS product also gives Cisco game with the biggest cloud
provider, the one that many of Cisco’s customers would no doubt
be asking it to work with. Cisco will not only offer subscription
software on AWS, but has developed some hardware those companies
can buy, helping it sell more of its traditional gear as well.

And the AWS Kubernetes services will be sold by Cisco’s enormous
and powerful salesforce and its giant network of sales partners.
Another score for Amazon.

“Keep in mind Cisco’s massive sales channel.  AWS can
get some access to it via this partnership.  It’s a win win
for both firms,” Elliot says.

But there’s a bonus in here for Cisco as well. In a big splashy
announcement
a couple of years ago, Amazon had previously partnered with
one of Cisco’s biggest rivals, VMware, to offer hybrid cloud
computing services. Kubernetes is widely considered to be a
technology that makes VMware’s flagship technology
obsolete. 

So by offering a Kubernetes product on AWS, Cisco elbows into
VMware’s partnership with the cloud computing giant.

One more burn for Google

And there’s one more burn for Google in here. Amazon has been
criticized recently by companies that make open source software
for being a taker without giving back.

Amazon has every legal right to Kubernetes as a service. Google
has given it away as an open source project managed by an
independent organization.

Google
cloud CEO Diane Greene
Greg
Sandoval/Business Insider

But there’s a social contract involved when companies open source
their software. Anyone can use it, or change it, but they are
supposed to share their changes with the whole group. In this
way, the creator gets help with building and growing the project,
and everyone benefits.

But Amazon has come under fire for “strip mining.” Taking open
source projects, commercializing them (as it is legally allowed
to do) but not contributing to them. One open source company
recently
grew so fed up with Amazon and other cloud providers over
this practice that it’s trying to get a new license passed that
would force strip miners to either contribute or pay.

Amazon charges its customers for Kubernetes but, for a company
with the engineering resources of Amazon, it contributes only a
tiny bit back, according to the
organization that manages the project. 

The biggest contributor, by a mile, to the project is Google.