It's time for Cisco Live! Europe. Next week and for the second year in a row we will host the event in Berlin, Germany. If you are not familiar with Cisco Live, you can watch a brief video with some of the highlights from last year.

Cisco Live is about you. This is your time to learn, network, share insights and acquire handsonexperience with our solutions in the DevNet Zone. Cisco Live features distinct programs enabling you to build a personalized agenda mapped to your individual interests. And .. as you would expect, one of the many technology tracks we feature is about Cloud.

As Kip Compton articulated in one of his most recent blogs'we are continually innovating and expanding our cloud offerings to meet demands and provide the freedom to choose the best environments and consumption models for our customers.'And in fact, we have an ever growing cloud portfolio, which includes cloud security, hybrid cloud solutions (cloud infrastructure, cloud management and orchestration software), cloud applications, cloud professional services and a vast partner ecosystem.

Cisco Metacloud?, CloudCenter? and Prime Service Catalog

What I am particularly excited about is the opportunity to share with you what the integration of multiple solutions can do for your business. For example, in the World of Solutions -specifically in the Data Center and Cloud area -you will be able to witness how Cisco Metacloud and CloudCenter can work together and how they can interact with Prime Service Catalog to offer end-to-end provisioning and deployment of cloud services across various cloud environments. Let's briefly review the individual solutions first:

• Cisco Metacloud?is our Private Cloud as a Service offering powered by OpenStack -delivered in a data center of your choice -and inclusive of hardware, software and expertise. Compared to IT built and managed OpenStack-based solutions, Cisco Metacloud offers lower risks, single point of accountability, guaranteed SLAs and faster time to value. And you do not need to know much about OpenStack to deploy Metacloud in your environment. As a side note, Metacloud can be a formidable platform for Big Data. We can demonstrate how a user can leverage an OpenStack orchestration (Heat) template to deploy Hadoop on Cisco Metacloud. The provisioning of the required infrastructure (network, storage and compute) for Hadoop is seamless. Stop by at our Metacloud booth to learn more.
• Cisco CloudCenter?is an application-centric hybrid cloud management platform that securely provisions infrastructure resources and deploys applications to data center, private cloud, and public cloud environments. If you want to learn more about CloudCenter my previous blog will provide you with a brief overview or (even better) you can see it in action at the event.
• If you are using automation to deliver data center and application services, Cisco Prime Service Catalog is your essential user interface.Cisco Prime Service Catalogdelivers the ultimate customer user interface for the self-service model. It replaces multiple manual ordering methods with a simple tool that streamlines order and lifecycle management.

A Powerful Combination

Now let's bring these solutions together ... what can you do with this powerful combination?

You can seeDevOps in action: If you are a developer who has put together a Dockerized application, sooner or later you will want to test it or deploy it in a production environment. And you can deploy the application via CloudCenter on Cisco Metacloud and test any changes in production .... basically without leaving your integrated development environment. For example, after you check the code into GitHub, a Jenkins build process can be triggered. The build process invokes the application profile deployment and injects the latest successful build artifact in CloudCenter. Subsequently, the code is deployed to the test environment, which in this case resides on Metacloud. The developer will then be notified that the new code has been deployed.

You can then determine thebest cloud fitfor your application: Ok the code is finally ready .. and with CloudCenter you can optimize the placement of the application depending on your criteria. You can profile your application using price and/or performance metrics across a large number of supported cloud environments (e.g., Microsoft Azure, AWS, Metacloud etc..) By running a benchmark you can select the target cloud deployment platform that best meets your needs. For example, should you decide to retain your data and applications on premises Cisco Metacloud would represent an ideal target.

And finally, if you are just a user you simply want to gain access to an application ..... and fast! This is the wayIT as a Serviceis supposed to work. You can easily provision an enterprise application via a self-service portal using Prime Service Catalog. The user simply selects their desired application from a menu of business services. This sets the automated delivery processes in motion. The application gets transparently deployed on Cisco Metacloud or whichever cloud deployment model was chosen by the IT administrator. And if the developer tweaks the code, it will happen in the background without you (the user) being aware of it.

In summary, Cisco Prime Service Catalog + Cisco CloudCenter + Cisco Metacloud provide a comprehensive and a powerful combination to support the entire lifecycle of your cloud applications. You can talk to our experts at the Metacloud and CloudCenter booths about each of these solutions and their combined value proposition. Additionally, Jeremy Oakey, will host a session onThursday Feb 23^rdat 11:30 AMthat you do not want to miss:'Multicloud and Application Centric Modeling, Deployment and Management with Cisco CloudCenter'-BRKCLD-2008.

Cisco Business Cloud Advisor

Last but not least, we have an array of Cloud Professional Services to help you continuously improve your Hybrid IT environments. Expertise is a major barrier for organizations to be able to optimize their multicloud strategies. Our Cloud Professional Services team can help. Stop by first at the Cisco Business Cloud Advisor (BCA) booth to receive a personalized summary regarding your cloud environment and enter to win daily prizes! The Cisco BCA Adoption Report -developed in conjunction with IDC -is available in a number of European languages: German, French, Italian, and Spanish in addition to English. Fill-in the survey, see where you are compared to your peers.

Ask about our BCA Workshops or simply attend my session ('Multicloud Strategies for Greater Business Impact' on Thursday Feb 23^rd1:15 pm -PSOCLD-2900) to learn more. We will review the latest cloud trends and discuss how you can begin closing 'the cloud gap' by leveraging some of the IDC research findings and industry best practices.

See you in Berlin .... and in the meantime .... please refer to the resources listed below if you would like to learn more ...

Auf Wiedersehen.

Reference Materials

• Cloud Sessions at Cisco Live Berlin
• Cisco ONE Enterprise Cloud Suite Website
• Cisco CloudCenter Website
• Cisco Metacloud Website
• Cisco Business Cloud Advisor Website
• Get your personalized Cloud Adoption summary (enabled by IDC)
• Cisco Cloud Portfolio Overview Website