Cisco: Data Center 3.0 Eyes the InterCloud

Cisco's Data Center 3.0 vision was unveiled as an initiative to create a unified networking fabric in the data center built atop Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). Cisco is now extending its vision to cloud computing, and seeing its networking gear and technologies enabling an "InterCloud" in which virtual machines move seamlessly between federated cloud computing platforms.

Doug Gourlay provides a Data Center 3.0 update in a video posted at the Cisco Data Center Networks blog and on Facebook. Doug discusses Cisco's vision for "a federation of clouds based on open standards" that would create a market for enterprise cloud services. The interconnection of clouds has been the focus of active discussions in the cloud computing community for some time.

What's Cisco's angle? The company clearly sees its technology at the center of  the cloud, and especially at its on-ramps. In addition to the Nexus switches and unified fabric, Doug mentions Cisco's IETF proposal for Locator/ID Separation Protocol (LISP), which outlines a technique for reducing routing table size.

Cisco's growing interest in the cloud is also reflected in its recent hire of James Urquhart, whose Wisdom of the Clouds blog has just moved to CNet. James is well-connected in the cloud computing community, and well suited to be Cisco's "ambassador to the cloud."