Cisco’s HyperFlex hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) product will gain a software-only version at some point next year that will allow the platform to run on third-party and white box servers. And that expansion will eventually extend to the public cloud.

Manish Agarwal, director of product management for HyperFlex at Cisco, explained in a blog post that the “Cisco Validated” program will test and validate the HCI platform running on those third-party servers. This will provide “customers the flexibility to pick server platforms of their choice, while providing Cisco certified solutions that customers can adopt with confidence.”

The eventual expansion into the public cloud environment will further provide for a “consistent experience across the data center, edge, and cloud,” he added.

HyperFlex is currently tied to Cisco UCS servers, which has been a solid combination. The platform was included in the “leaders” category of Forrester’s recent review of the HCI market. Others in that category included Nutanix and VMware.

Cisco’s software move also shores up one of Forrester’s critiques of the system.

“Cisco HyperFlex is feature-rich and future focused but confined to its installed base,” the report stated in its evaluation, adding that “HyperFlex isn't available as software; thus, Cisco's solution isn't an option for customers that have standardized on competitive server hardware platforms.”

Cisco earlier this year did add a Kubernetes-based layer on top of HyperFlex that allows for deployments in on-premises data centers and across clouds. However, that HyperFlex Application Platform is still reliant on the underlying Cisco hardware.

Cisco is also working on new Kubernetes, storage, and edge capabilities for other parts of the HyperFlex platform. Those updates will be part of a 4.5 release scheduled for later this year.

These will include broader availability of Cisco’s integrated Application Platform and Intersight Kubernetes Service, which has so far been limited to select customers. This integration includes a curated set of open-source tools, the ability to automate basic tasks, and provides a full-stack lifecycle management.

There are also plans for deeper integration with the Kubernetes Container Storage Interface (CSI) to expand containerized storage options, new edge computing devices, and increased data protection and security features.