Tuesday, Cisco announced it is extending its Google Cloud collaboration around network access to web-based applications. Specifically, businesses can integrate Cisco’s Wide Area software (SD-WAN) Network with Google Cloud and Anthos, offering full cloud workload WAN integration for joint customers. The integrations between Cisco and Google Cloud take place in perspective in 2017 when the companies developed a hybrid cloud partnership to improve the link between Cisco’s infrastructure and Google services. In the first Cisco-Google project, Kubernetes, Istio, and Apigee acted as a glue. The cornerstone of this new integration is Google Anthos, a platform introduced last year for the management of on-site or cloud applications. Through integrating the Cisco SD-WAN services tightly with Google Cloud and Anthos, businesses are now able to deliver the Cisco SD-WAN cloud hub with Google Cloud to a modern, turnkey multicloud networking infrastructure. The company would help corporate customers simplify buiness networking and improve security capabilities while allowing IT teams to reduce operational costs and achieve application company objectives, said the firms. For example, cloud apps can dynamically request network resources by publishing application data in the Google Cloud Service Directory through integration. From there, the service communicates the metadata of the client and enables the network to include the correct SD-WAN policies and access. Before the end of 2020, Cisco and Google Cloud will invite selected customers to preview the solution. In the first half of 2021, general availability is planned. “We believe by combining the core technology strengths of both Cisco and Google Cloud, we can provide best-in-class, cloud-delivered enterprise networking solutions that make network management easy for our customers and allow them to meet their business needs with agility,” Shukla added.
