Cisco just announced that it intends to acquire private cloud company Metacloud to accelerate its own “intercloud” strategy.

Metacloud says the deal will not affect users’ environments, and that it already has account reps reaching out to customers to answer questions. It counts Tableau, Ooyala, SK Planet, and Tapjoy among its customers.

“Metacloud’s OpenStack-based cloud platform will accelerate Cisco’s strategy to build the world’s largest global Intercloud, a network of clouds, together with key partners to address customer requirements for a globally distributed, highly secure cloud platform capable of meeting the robust demands of the Internet of Everything,” Cisco said in its announcement. “Since announcing its Intercloud strategy in March, Cisco has made rapid progress, enlisting key technology partners, service and cloud providers, all of whom are standardizing upon the Cisco Cloud Services architecture, which is based on OpenStack open source software for building private and public clouds.”

“Cloud computing has dramatically changed the IT landscape. To enable greater business agility and lower costs, organizations are shifting from an on-premise IT structure to hybrid IT – a mix of private cloud, public cloud, and on-premise applications,” said Hilton Romanski, senior vice president, Cisco Corporate Development. “The resulting silos present a challenge to IT administrators, as choice, visibility, data sovereignty and protection in this world of many clouds requires an open platform. We believe Metacloud’s technology will play a critical role in enabling our customers to experience a seamless journey to a new world of many clouds, providing choice, flexibility, and data governance.”

The company didn’t disclose how much it’s paying for Metacloud, but says it expcts the deal to close in the first quarter of fiscal year 2015.

Metacloud employees will join Cisco’s Cloud Infrastructure and Managed Services organization after the deal is completed.

Image via Metacloud