Cisco, Google join hands for cloud computing

Tech giants want to take on Amazon, the current market leader

Google and Cisco Systems, two trendsetters in different eras of the internet, are joining forces as the growth of cloud computing puts new pressure on big tech companies and leads to strange corporate bedfellows.

The Silicon Valley giants on Wednesday announced a collaboration to help companies manage software and technology services that may run in their own data centers or in facilities operated by external cloud services.

Google, the largest unit of its parent, Alphabet, hopes to benefit from Cisco’s close ties to corporate customers as the search engine giant tries to catch up to Amazon, the market leader in cloud services,