The presence of Google Cloud Chief Executive Officer Diane Greene on the keynote stage at the Cisco Live conference this week in Orlando, Florida, was more than just a symbolic show of mutual support.

The two companies announced a partnership last fall to collaborate on a hybrid-cloud offering. On Monday, they revealed more details about the deal, which is designed to help customers build apps that span on-premises data centers and the public cloud. It will combine Cisco’s new Container Platform, based on Kubernetes and launched earlier this year, with a hyperconverged infrastructure product known as HyperFlex, both tightly integrated with Google Cloud.

Cisco Systems Inc. is transitioning from its image as a hardware vendor to one that offers software and services, while Google Inc. would dearly love to capture a major share of the enterprise cloud market.

“Cisco is refocusing on partnerships, and Google is a good one to start with,” said Stu Miniman, co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during theCUBE’s analysis of the Cisco Live keynote event. “Diane Greene was salivating on stage, seeing 25,000 enterprise customers here that she wants to have use her cloud.”

Miniman was joined at the conference by co-host John Furrier, and they discussed parallels between Cisco’s strategy and VMware Inc.’s, Cisco’s growing developer network and potential new innovations for the company’s customers.

Cisco pivots like VMware

Both analysts saw parallels in Cisco’s collaboration with Google Cloud with VMware’s pivot out of its own foray in the cloud involving vCloud Air and into a deal with Amazon Web Services Inc.

“Cisco has essentially pulled off a VMwarelike move,” said Furrier, who noted that the company is more focused on the core business of running networks and applying effective security policies inside the architecture. “Those architectural things that don’t look immediate are reaping rewards for VMware. I see Cisco in the same boat.”

Among the announcements from Orlando this week was the news that Cisco’s developer network, known as DevNet, had reached a half-million registered members. The network was launched in 2014 with a focus on creating network software and sharing programmable solutions.

“The developer area is really the hot topic,” Miniman said. “Over 500,000 developers registered on the platform. That’s big news.”

In her keynote appearance, Greene encouraged attendees to introduce “mind-blowing” new innovations, a message that plays to Cisco’s interest in moving into a number of different areas. “Mind-blowing things means machine learning, artificial intelligence, things that Cisco wants to introduce as services to the cloud,” Furrier said. “It’s a natural progression for Cisco customers to move there.”

Here’s the complete video interview, and there’s more coverage of the Cisco Live event from SiliconANGLE and theCUBE:

Photo: Cisco Systems