This is Cisco Plus, which will offer networking, security, computing, storage, application and visibility-as-a-service solutions with unified subscriptions that promise to be easy to consume and use. The existing partner ecosystem can benefit from the company’s sales and support experiences.
As part of a new edition of Cisco Live! today, Cisco announced Cisco Plus, the company’s unique as-a-service strategy to bring customers new flexible purchasing and consumption models for hardware, software and services.
Network-as-a-Service is a cloud model that enables customers to easily maintain and operate the outcomes they expect to get from the network without having to own, build and maintain their own infrastructure.
“As IT teams strive to provide consistent, secure access to their growing remote and mobile workforce with less complexity, they want the benefits of NaaS models. They need a simple and reliable approach to protect and connect people across the hybrid workplace,” the company said.
The Cisco SASE offer currently available enables customers to leverage future services with investment protection. The company is planning limited release NaaS solutions later this year to unify networking, security and visibility services across WAN and cloud domains.
Cisco Plus NaaS solutions will provide:
- Seamless and secure onramps to applications and cloud providers
- Flexible delivery models, including pay-per-use or pay-as-you-grow options
- End-to-end visibility from the client to the application to the ISP
- Unified policy engine to ensure the right users have access
- Security across everything, not bolted on as another point solution
- Real-time analytics providing AI/ML-driven insights for cost and performance tracking
- API extensibility across the technology stack
- Partners who provide additional value and deliver their services more quickly
The NaaS launch will first focus on a cloud-based as-a-service solution for secure access service edge (SASE).
“Every business is unique with its own challenges today, but what we have in common is the need to simplify everything,” said Todd Nightingale, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Networking and Cloud, Cisco.“Network-as-a-service is a great option for businesses wanting to shift to a cloud operating model without the heavy lift. Cisco is leading the industry in its approach with Cisco Plus. Together with our partners, we intend to offer the majority of our technology portfolio to be clouddelivered, cloud-managed and offered as-a-service.”
Initial Offer: Cisco Plus Hybrid Cloud
Available mid-year 2021, the Cisco Plus Hybrid Cloud solution as-a-service includes Cisco’s entire data center compute, networking and storage portfolio in addition to third-party storage and software, bridging on-premise, edge and public cloud. It features a flexible consumption model and a full lifecycle suite of services through Cisco Customer Experience (CX) and with partners. Customers can choose the level of services they desire for planning, design and install.
Matching a wide range of customer needs, Cisco Plus Hybrid Cloud offers extremely flexible payment options, with order delivery within 14 days. Initial as-a-service offers will be available as a limited release in Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, UK and the U.S.
Cisco Plus Experience Built on CX Cloud
Later this year, as-a-service customers will be able to engage quickly and easily with Cisco via the Cisco Plus Experience, a self-service engagement portal built on Cisco CX Cloud that allows customers and partners to learn about, consume and track usage of Cisco’s as-a-service portfolio. The intuitive interface will include a marketplace where customers can choose from a broad catalog of Cisco and partner services.
Continuation of Partner-First Model
Cisco Plus will leverage the existing partner ecosystem to help more customers get access to the outcomes they need. Cisco and its partners bring over 20 years of experience, delivering over 2,300 service offers together. Cisco Gold Provider program partners will play a key role in delivering Cisco Plus offers, accelerating their as-a-service practices. Other Cisco partners can also benefit from selling and supporting more complete Cisco experiences.
