Does the idea of building out your own data center make you pause? Remember, the cloud enables you to leverage the investment service providers have made in cloud to reduce your own CAPEX and OPEX spending. You can literally transform how you do business with a wide range of infrastructure, collaboration, security, and recovery services delivered through the cloud.

Just the way your organization is different from other organizations, cloud services differ from each other. Trying to force your business to work with cloud technology that doesn't meet your needs means you'll have less success than you should. For example, trusting your mission-critical applications to a best-effort cloud can mean expensive downtime and loss of business continuity.

To help you select the right cloud for your business, Cisco created Cisco Powered services. For a service to carry the Cisco Powered designation, it has to be built on proven architectures and designed to provide enterprise-class performance, reliability, and security. And, just as cloud technology has evolved over the years, so has Cisco Powered. With both cloud and managed Cisco Powered services to choose from, you can collaborate and work the way you want.

Cisco Powered Cloud Services:Run your applications in enterprise-class data centers around the world. Your cloud provider manages your services so you don't have to. And, with the recent addition of the Cisco Powered Architecture for Microsoft Cloud Platforms, your cloud provider can provision physical IT resources on demand within the cloud that simplify, optimize, and accelerate the entire application deployment lifecycle.

Cisco Powered Managed Services:Let your cloud provider manage not just your services but your infrastructure as well.

In addition, the global partner ecosystem supporting Cisco Powered gives you a virtually unlimited choice of consumption models and services. More than 250 service providers have undergone the certification and audit processes required to offer Cisco Powered services. Together, they deliver more than 600 services worldwide. In addition, more than 500 resellers support these providers. These providers and resellers can help you determine your business needs and build an optimal plan so you get the most out of what the cloud has to offer.

With the increasing availability of commodity, best-effort cloud services, Cisco Powered continues to play an important role in enabling you to connect with the right service provider for you.

Learn how Cisco Powered can be your trusted choice for cloud and managed services to optimize your organization for the connected world.