Piston Cloud Computing is Cisco's second OpenStack cloud computing buyout in less than a year. It offers an OpenStack private cloud distribution designed for automated deployment, security and interoperability with public clouds that are also built on OpenStack.
Cisco says Piston Cloud's experience in distributed systems and automation will augment Cisco's Intercloud strategy of delivering a global network of interconnected clouds, and especially an OpenStack-based private cloud.
IBM, for its part, will use Blue Box's technology and infrastructure to help its customers with hybrid cloud deployments, making it easier to move workloads between a public cloud and their own data centres.
Blue Box gives organizations an alternative to setting up and deploying the OpenStack internally, offering the software stack as a service instead. This allows an organization to control workloads from a single console whether they run on Blue Box's private cloud or on internal infrastructure.
Blue Box private cloud customers including global media conglomerate Viacom and healthcare technology company BioIQ
Approximately 72 percent of enterprises plan to pursue a hybrid cloud computing strategy, according to a recent survey from Gartner.
Neither Cisco or IBM revealed financial details of their acquisitions.
