Cisco Systems Inc. is teaming up with Microsoft Corp. to make it easier for enterprises to run containerized Kubernetes applications on-premises and in the Azure cloud.

In a blog post today, Kip Compton, Cisco’s senior vice president of Cloud Platform and Solutions, said the companies are making it possible to deploy and manage Kubernetes clusters on both the on-premises Cisco Container Platform and the cloud-based Azure Kubernetes Service. Users can now deploy and manage their Kubernetes clusters via a single tool using common identity and control policies, he said.

Software containers are used to host the components of applications that can run on any type of computing infrastructure without changes. Kubernetes is an open-source system used to manage large clusters of those containers. It enables users to build applications and services that span multiple containers, schedule them and scale them as necessary, and update them more easily.

Compton said the integration was made possible by adding Microsoft’s AKS service to the Kubernetes managed services available on the Cisco Container Platform.

The collaboration is just the latest integration between Cisco’s services and Azure. It builds upon the Cisco Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack, which enables Cisco’s on-premises customers to use Azure services such as its development tools and data repositories. Azure Stack is an on-premises appliance that replicates the Azure Cloud’s capabilities within a company’s private, on-premises data center.

Compton said the company is planning to add more features to Cisco Container Platform, including support for Windows container applications.

“In addition, we will support Azure Active Directory common identity integration for both on-prem and AKS clusters so customer/applications experience a single consistent environment across hybrid cloud,” Compton wrote.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller said the collaboration helps Cisco since it ensures that its Container Platform stays relevant at a time when enterprises are increasingly looking to the cloud.

“On-premises platforms need a cloud outlet, and this is what Cisco and Microsoft are doing in this partnership, courtesy of the popular and desired Kubernetes platform,” Mueller said.

He added that the collaboration is a win for both companies because Cisco gets a vendor-supported public cloud outlet that helps to keep its platform relevant, while Microsoft gets to work with a company that offers a managed pathway to Azure.

“In the long run, though, this will mean that on-premises loads are moving to the public cloud, at the expense of Cisco on-premise architecture usage,” he said.

Cisco’s appetite for cloud partnerships has seen it forge tight integrations with Microsoft’s main rivals in the space too. For example, its worked with Amazon Web Services Inc. to offer a Cisco Hybrid Solution for Kubernetes on AWS for customers who want to deploy hybrid apps on its infrastructure and the AWS cloud. It also sells an offering called Cisco Hybrid Cloud Platform for Google Cloud, which provides similar capabilities for those who want to use Google LLC’s cloud infrastructure.

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