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

During CiscoLive!, I had the chance to talk with Andy Bird, Executive Director, Product Management and Development at eLoyalty, a Cisco partner for more than 15 years.  "We've chosen to partner up with Cisco and have a Cisco Powered cloud that allows us to offer stable and scalable solutions.  We've built a front end around them that offers the simplicity that customers expect from a cloud-based service."

To verify that eLoyalty would be able to deliver on the promises of Cisco Powered services, they had to achieve certifications and pass a third-party audit.  "It's important that we're enterprise-grade. That audit allowed us to get to that point."

Bird described several of the complications involved in the integration of technology: multi-tenancy, permissions-based clouds, security, self-administration.  "These things become a big deal," he said.  "Having Cisco on the back end enables us to not have to worry about the core."

Bird also talked about the value of the Cisco Intercloud to eLoyalty.  "There are a lot of disparate clouds out there.  But imagine trying to take your data from one cloud and move it to the next.  It's very difficult to do, because when you look at clouds, you end up getting hooked into them, just like if you were to buy premise gear.

"What Cisco has been starting to enable to happen is the idea of creating a fabric between the clouds that allows me to migrate data.  When somebody gets on my platform, they have the ability to go and leverage Cisco in other places.  So they have a different level of confidence."

Cisco's partner ecosystem also plays an important role to eLoyalty.  "Even though I've got Cisco at the core, I still have all of these peripheral, secondary, tertiary applications to make seamless and ubiquitous.  But I'm not going to build my own WFN and QM.  I'm not going to develop my own CTI integration.  I'm using that entire ecosystem that Cisco has paved the way for.

"My value is that I bring them all together."

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