One year ago Cisco Systems Ltd. announced ambitious plans to invest $1 billion in creating a cloud computing platform that would be able to rival Amazon Web Services, which many consider to be the undisputed leader in the space.

People might have scoffed at Cisco’s ambitions at the time, but the company is pressing ahead with its plans, making some big announcements at Cisco Live, its annual conference.

What we now know is that Cisco’s plan is a creative one, if nothing else. For rather than launch the Intercloud from its own data centers and try to tackle Amazon head-on, it’s aiming to unify the smaller cloud service companies into one giant family of products that are all compatible with one another.

Basically, Cisco is trying to unify the smaller outfits into a more coherent and competitive mass. Behind Cisco’s logic is the assumption that most of the smaller guys customers won’t jump ship to Amazon or Microsoft Azure any time soon, and so it can keep selling them its networking gear as those companies grow.

Of course, those smaller cloud computing guys can only compete if they have solid services to offer, and to ensure that’s the case, Cisco is launching the Intercloud Marketplace, an app store where customers can find the software, tools and technologies they need to get started in the cloud. To that end, Cisco announced a number of new partners, including hot startups like container software player Docker Inc., Hadoop developer Hortonworks Inc., and the developer automation tool Chef Software Inc., who have brought a total of 35 apps to the table.

Besides the marketplace, Cisco made a second big announcement around the “hybrid cloud” concept. Hybrid cloud refers to the integration of on-premise data centers with the public cloud, and brings advantages of flexibility and scalability.

Cisco announced a new technology called Intercloud Fabric for controlling and managing both your Intercloud and your on-premise data center from the same user interface. Cloud service providers like Datalink Corp., Peak 10 Inc., and Sungard Availability Services Ltd., are the first of what Cisco hopes will be many companies to support Intercloud Fabric. The platform should theoretically help their customers find it easier to get started with their cloud operations.

The Internet of clouds?

Besides these developments, Cisco has also added new functionality for Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure to its Intercloud. The new functionality enables Intercloud customers to view Amazon or Azure workloads directly from Cisco Intercloud and then “seamlessly move workloads” between public clouds and the Intercloud.

One of the things Cisco wants to do with the Intercloud is make it possible for companies to seamlessly move workloads between different cloud providers. For example, you may have a server workload operating within Azure. Cisco wants to create an environment where you could shift that workload easily from there to AWS even if that means switching hypervisors.

The announcements suggest Cisco is right in its often-repeated assertion that despite Amazon’s early lead in the cloud market, there’s still a long, long way to go, and anything can happen. Recent research from Goldman Sachs, which shows cloud computing will account for 5 percent of an estimated $400 billion total IT spend this year, but rise to 11 percent in 2018, also supports this theory.

In other words, while Cisco might have been late to the game, there’s still everything to play for.

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