Cisco and IBM announced separate acquisitions Wednesday to help both companies accelerate their cloud strategies.

Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) announced plans to acquire Piston Cloud Computing, a move which senior vice president and head of business development Hilton Romanski explained in a blog post will help accelerate the company's Intercloud "globally connected network of clouds."

Piston's distributed systems engineering and OpenStack expertise will enhance Cisco's capabilities for cloud automation, availability and scale in conjunction with Cisco's recent acquisition of Metacloud, added Romanski. The Piston assets will specifically advance Intercloud, Cisco's service for linking enterprises to cloud providers alongside carrier partners.

The Piston team will join Cisco's Cloud Services group under Fayaz Shahpurwala, senior vice president of cloud infrastructure and managed services organization.

Cisco and CenturyLink Cloud will be keynote speakers at Light Reading's second Big Telecom Event on June 9-10 in Chicago. Get yourself registered today or get left behind!

Also on Wednesday, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) announced its acquisition of Blue Box Group, an OpenStack managed cloud provider. IBM will use Blue Box assets to help businesses rapidly integrate cloud-based applications and on-premises systems into OpenStack-based managed clouds, IBM said in a statement.

Using Blue Box assets, IBM will be able to make private clouds easier to operate by having them act more like public clouds. According to IBM, Blue Box can help developers deliver applications and data more quickly, support hybrid cloud environments and IBM's Bluemix cloud app development platform, and provide a single management tool for OpenStack-based private clouds regardless of location.

Why it matters
Service providers are turning to cloud services as a new channel for business growth. Through Intercloud, Cisco offers a partnership opportunity that can help enterprise customers connect with cloud providers -- such as IBM OpenStack. IBM and Cisco are both potential partners for carriers, as well as competitors in providing cloud services and consulting.

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