(This is part 6 of a 7-part series sharing insights from Cisco partners about the Future of Cloud.)

"It's been invigorating for us to hear all of the different messages around cloud because we really think that's where the future is."  This is what Steve Harris, Senior Vice President, National Alliances at Peak 10 had to say to me when we took a break together at Cisco Live!

Peak 10 was founded as a commercial collocation organization focused on providing maximum uptime and reliability for its clients.  "When we went into the cloud business," said Harris, "we wanted to make sure that we could provide the same type of service that we've always given our clients.  For example, our enterprise cloud is essentially public cloud.  The differentiator, though, is that it isn't an oversubscribed cloud; it's production-grade.  It is multi-tenant, but you're getting dedicated resources."

Offering enterprise-class cloud services that maximize uptime and reliability, however, is not something that a single company can offer by itself.  "Today it takes an ecosystem to deliver the business outcome that clients are looking for.  We've gone beyond the point where clients are just interested in the technology.  They want the technology to provide a business outcome for them.  Being able to provide that seamless solution with the Cisco ecosystem of partners is incredibly important.

"The other thing that really differentiates Peak 10, and we've heard a lot about hybrid cloud, is the opportunity to mix and match with that environment.  So if you have a private cloud and want to leverage applications in the public cloud, we're absolutely able to do that."  This follows the vision of Cisco's Intercloud, the ability to have mobility of workloads between clouds.

"Which excites us at Peak 10 because we created that environment within our world."

You can also learn more about how providers are addressing the need for enterprise class services in the latest edition of Unleashing IT.