Great partnerships help bring simple solutions to complex problems, and Cisco's partnership with Google Cloud is a great example of what happens when two technology powerhouses work together. The hard work is paying off.  Yesterday, Cisco was proud to accept the Google Cloud Global Technology Partner of the Year Award at Google Cloud's Next Partner Summit in San Francisco, an event that showcases partners spanning Google Cloud's portfolio.

"Our technology partners are fundamental to providing innovative products to help customers solve their most challenging business problems," said Nan Boden, Head of Global Technology Partners at Google Cloud. "We're proud to recognize Cisco as this year's Global Technology Partner of the Year. We're delighted to continue building together with Cisco on behalf of customers."

Cisco was also awarded the Innovative Solution in Containers Award. The Cisco Container Platform, announced in January, helps customers simplify the deployment and management of Kubernetes clusters in a multicloud environment with enterprise-class security and compliance.

While this recognition is a testament to the value we can bring to our customers, the joint hybrid cloud solution was only the start of delivering on Cisco and Google's common technology vision. This partnership is broad and spans multiple domains to benefit enterprise customers.

Cisco and Google have been delivering: optimizing hybrid cloud was our starting point

When Cisco and Google first came together, we started by listening to our customers' biggest challenges. Customers face obstacles operating across multiple siloed environments, technologies, teams, and vendors. But on top of that, it's hard for them write applications that move seamlessly between public and private clouds.

Applications are the lifeblood of their businesses, and in a digital economy, accelerating innovation in applications is their competitive advantage. In a multicloud world, developers want to be able to securely connect, develop, deploy, and manage their applications in a common way regardless of where the resources are -on -premises or in the cloud.

Cisco and Google knew that no one company could solve this alone, so together we tackled the challenge by bringing our customers the best of both worlds-Google Cloud's speed and scale with Cisco's enterprise-class networking, security, and compute. This is taking Google's open Kubernetes and Istio technologies and bringing them on -premises with Cisco HyperFlex and on bare metal so developers can have a modern and consistent environment everywhere.

In less than a year, our partnership has paid off in big ways

We've introduced the new Cisco Container Platform and Kubernetes support for Cisco CloudCenter and AppDynamics, and we're contributing to the Kubernetes and Istio open source platforms. Together, Cisco and Google Cloud are co-developing a "well-lit" path for customers to migrate to the cloud at their own pace and on their own terms, while also taking advantage of open source technologies.

The Cisco Hybrid Platform for Google Cloud -the first GKE certified hybrid platform -will be available next month. Several companies in the early access program have tested it, and we've seen tremendous enthusiasm from prospective customers, developers, and joint partners. Developers can engage now in the Cisco & Google Cloud Dev Center.

Cisco is bringing our DevNet community together with Google's Technology Partners by challenging them to reimagine how business is done and how IT is managed in a hybrid cloud environment. We're challenging developers to build game-changing hybrid cloud applications using the Cisco Container Platform with Google Cloud Platform services to win some pretty spectacular prizes. Take the challenge.

We are already simplifying hybrid cloud, now we're simplifying the way people work

What started with the infrastructure is now moving to the applications.

Globally, more than 150 million people rely on Cisco's Collaboration portfolio to get their jobs done, and many of them are also using G Suite and other Google Cloud Platform services to boost productivity. Now, we're joining forces on the collaboration front.

Today at Google Cloud Next, we announced the first wave of Cisco Collaboration integrations including Webex integrations with Google Calendar and Chrome for a truly seamless scheduling and joining experience from any device.

Further, at Cisco, we believe artificial intelligence (AI) will dramatically change the way we work, and we are piloting embedding Google AI into the Cisco Contact Center experience. Cisco Contact Center already powers more than 3 million on-premises and cloud customer service agents globally. With this capability, those agents will become faster and more knowledgeable, transforming the way businesses interact with their customers.

Our successful partnership with Google is based on four key tenets

Many people have asked me why this technology partnership has thrived and moved so fast.  Here's what I tell them:

1. Laser-focus on our customers.  We know no one company can meet every need, so we are bringing them the best security and networking portfolio from Cisco and the best cloud services from Google.
2. Joint leadership commitment starting from the top.  Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins and Google Cloud CEO, Diane Greene have prioritized this extraordinary effort to develop and execute our goals.
3. Deep engineering integration. With leadership from Cisco EVP/GM, Networking and Security, David Goeckeler, and Google SVP Technical Infrastructure, Urs Holzle, our engineers are co-innovating a solution designed to work seamlessly across hybrid cloud environments.
4. A complementary partner and developer ecosystem that benefits our customers.Together, Cisco and Google are developing tools, resources and programs to help our vast partner ecosystems take our innovations to our customers.

Stay tuned.  There is much more to come!

Links to additional information:

• Take the Cisco and Google Cloud Challenge -a challenge announced yesterday by Cisco DevNet VP/CTO Susie Wee for developers to build their best hybrid cloud applications using both Cisco and Google Cloud Platform
• Read the news announcement: Cisco and Google embark on a journey to streamline work for 150M+ people
• Read about Google's Partner Summit kickoff -Building a better cloud with our partners at Next '18