Cisco plans to kill off its Intercloud Services public cloud in March 2017, moving workloads to other infrastructures, including public cloud.

The death of Intercloud comes after major tech companies have struggled to turn OpenStack open-source cloud software-based services into a success, including HP and Rackspace.

Death of a cloud

Cisco confirmed to VentureBeat that Intercloud would be stopped, a rumor originally reported by The Register.

The company said in a statement: “Cisco has internally communicated that we are discontinuing one of our internal cloud platforms and will be transitioning affected workloads onto other platforms.

“We do not expect any material customer issues as a result of this transition. For the last several months we have been evolving our cloud strategy and our service provider partners are aware of this.”

It said that it “continually re-evaluates its technology strategy as customers’ needs evolve,” adding that “the cloud market has shifted considerably in the last two years, and many of our customers are asking Cisco to help them develop cloud strategies that will help drive their digital transformations.”

The company concluded that its “cloud strategy centers on building and delivering secure hybrid cloud infrastructure, platforms, and services — with our partners — that offer customers the freedom to choose the best environments and consumption models for their traditional and new cloud-native applications.”

Cisco had big plans for Intercloud when it launched with a billion dollars behind it in 2014, and had the backing of over 30 partners including BT, Deutsche Telekom, NTT Data and Equinix.

But the service failed to gain serious traction in the face of myriad competition, causing Cisco to announce that it would discontinue its Intercloud software, for moving workloads from private clouds to public clouds, this year, ahead of the shutdown of the public cloud itself.