One year ago Cisco Systems Ltd. announced ambitious plans to invest $1 billion in creating a cloud computing platform that would be able to rival Amazon Web Services, which many consider to be the undisputed leader in the space.

 Cisco is trying to unify the smaller outfits into a more coherent and competitive mass. Behind Cisco’s logic is the assumption that most of the smaller guys customers won’t jump ship to Amazon or Microsoft Azure any time soon, and so it can keep selling them its networking gear as those companies grow.

 Besides the marketplace, Cisco made a second big announcement around the “hybrid cloud” concept. Hybrid cloud refers to the integration of on-premise data centers with the public cloud, and brings advantages of flexibility and scalability.

Cisco announced a new technology called Intercloud Fabric for controlling and managing both your Intercloud and your on-premise data center from the same user interface. Cloud service providers like Datalink Corp., Peak 10 Inc., and Sungard Availability Services Ltd., are the first of what Cisco hopes will be many companies to support Intercloud Fabric. The platform should theoretically help their customers find it easier to get started with their cloud operations.

 The internet of clouds?

Besides these developments, Cisco has also added new functionality for Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure to its Intercloud. The new functionality enables Intercloud customers to view Amazon or Azure workloads directly from Cisco Intercloud and then “seamlessly move workloads” between public clouds and the Intercloud.

One of the things Cisco wants to do with the Intercloud is make it possible for companies to seamlessly move workloads between different cloud providers. For example, you may have a server workload operating within Azure. Cisco wants to create an environment where you could shift that workload easily from there to AWS even if that means switching hypervisors.

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