Cisco is driving innovation to take a significant leap forward in hybrid cloud automation today, by bringing the benefits of infrastructure as code (IaC) automation to hybrid cloud environments. We are delighted to announce theCisco Intersight Service for HashiCorp Terraform,a new integrated SaaS service and commercial offer, that is built on our ongoing partnership with HashiCorp.

IaC automation is increasingly popular for provisioning in public cloud environments and is being rapidly adopted by DevOps. Through this new service, IT Ops teams can leverage a consistent operating model for infrastructure and workloads across the edge, co-los, data centers, and public clouds. IT Ops users can now use Intersight to provision hybrid cloud, through a common set of tools and services. This is the most seamless way for customers to get a consistent cloud operating model for their on-prem and cloud estates and modernize operations.

This integration brings together leaders in public and private cloud automation. HashiCorp is a pioneer of IaC and HashiCorp Terraform is a widely adopted IaC platform for provisioning and management of cloud infrastructure. Terraform Cloud Business is HashiCorp's cloud service for enterprise customers delivered as a SaaS offering, and is the easiest way to use Terraform in production, at scale.

Intersight was built with a vision to deliver a unified SaaS platform, enabling a "cloud-first" strategy and easing the path to modernization for our customers. When Cisco first released Intersight in 2017, we delivered an industry-leading service for infrastructure lifecycle management. Since then, we continue to execute on our vision:

• We introducedIntersight Infrastructure Servicein 2017, which brought a new level of automation with the Connected TAC Support, Advisories, Compliance Checks, and more
• Last October at our Partner Summit, we introduced several Intersight services and capabilities including:
  • Intersight Workload Optimizerthat brings full-stack visibility from the app to infrastructure and full-stack optimization whether in the public cloud or on-premises
  • Intersight Kubernetes Service, which delivers a curated and managed container as a service platform for cloud native development
  • Intersight Virtualization Service, which enables hypervisor agnostic common virtualization services

Intersight with its modular, SaaS-ready architecture, drives continuous innovation on the platform at rapid speed, enabling new services, like the one we are talking about today -Intersight Service for Terraform. And because Intersight and Terraform are both cloud hosted, SaaS platforms, integrations like this are open, simple, and seamless.

Benefits of Intersight Integration

Intersight Service for Terraform securely integrates with Terraform Cloud Business with single sign-on authentication and secure on-prem access that allows customers to access platforms such as Terraform Cloud Business through Intersight.

Integrations like this enable Intersight customers to enjoy end-to-end automation, which drives governance and consistency for self-service capabilities. This enables developers and application teams to increase their overall agility and reduces time to market for their innovations. Intersight delivers this with an open, cloud-agnostic approach driven by native public-cloud integrations and support for an ecosystem of third-party tooling. This allows developers and other IT stakeholders to continue using the platforms and software of their choice without disruption.

Specifically, Intersight Service for HashiCorp Terraform provides the following unique customer benefits:

1. Users can get a single, simple, and seamless experience for applying IaC to private and hybrid cloud
2. The entire solution is delivered as a secure SaaS, simplifying the customers' management of hybrid clouds while at the same time ensuring security and reducing risk
3. Cisco will also offer centralized support across customer's Intersight and HashiCorp Terraform Cloud Business environments under the Cisco Solution Support program

With the Intersight Service for HashiCorp Terraform, we're bridging ITOps and DevOps teams, as well as bridging on-prem and public cloud, with the same automation methods and a common cloud operating model. This integration deliverssimplicityby having Intersight manage the end-to-end lifecycle (deployments, upgrades, scaling, networking) of Terraform Agents on the Intersight Assist Appliance, which is a secure and hardened appliance. It alsoreduces the operational overheadof connecting IaC pipelines with infrastructure domain management. And it isextensiblethrough Intersight Assist delivering a growing library of integrations with Terraform, Pure Storage, NetApp, Hitachi, and VMware to help up-level IT operations. These use cases and others enable customers to rapidly manage and provision private and public cloud resources end-to-end and do it safely and securely via Intersight.

Cisco and HashiCorp Commercial and Support Partnership

In addition to the integration between Intersight and Terraform, Cisco and HashiCorp are also announcing a multi-year commercial agreement under which Cisco will re-sell HashiCorp Terraform Cloud Business on the Cisco global pricing list under the Cisco DevNet SolutionsPlus program. Cisco will also offer single window support for Intersight and Terraform Cloud Business under the Cisco Solution Support program. This allows customers to simplify their buying experience by consolidating their purchase and support for Intersight and Terraform Cloud Business. We are planning to make Cisco Intersight Service for HashiCorp Terraform generally available in April.

Amith Nair, VP of Product Marketing at HashiCorp, describes the value of this integration in his words, "We know customers have many options when they're architecting today's data centers. These customers need the best solutions available, not a monolithic, one-size-fits-all approach. Cisco and HashiCorp share a common vision for helping customers achieve a cloud operating model that enables agility, velocity, and self-service IT operations. This joint solution will allow customers to easily adopt an infrastructure as code model for private and hybrid clouds with Cisco Intersight Service for Terraform Cloud."

Brent Collins, senior director, Data Center Solutions at World Wide Technology says -"Developers and traditional IT teams are under pressure to accelerate application innovation, improve development agility, and simplify infrastructure deployment and delivery. To deliver on this requirement, HashiCorp Terraform natively integrates with the Cisco Intersight offering to provide customers with a consistent IaC platform spanning any Terraform provider-enabled private and public cloud infrastructure. This integration enables WWT to build modern multi-cloud architectures that drive transformational outcomes for our valued customers."

Learn More at Cisco Live

There is no debate that it is becoming increasingly complex for IT Operations and DevOps teams to keep up with expanding cloud footprints and the diverse set of technologies required to develop and manage today's infrastructure at scale. IaC enables IT Operations teams to embrace a DevOps model, accelerate application deployment, and monitor operations in a secure and predictable manner. IaC platforms, like Terraform, make it possible to programmatically configure data center and cloud infrastructures whether in public or private clouds.

For more information, please join me and Armon Dadgar, co-founder and chief technology officer at HashiCorp, as we discuss this and other topics at our iTalk session at Cisco Live 2021.

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