Cisco – at the Cisco Partner Summit 2017 — announced a new channel program to help partners grab new business opportunities, refine software and services skills sets, and differentiate themselves in the market.
Cisco is making three key changes to its programs: simplification, building capabilities, and increasing the partner value exchange to help partners adapt to the fast moving market trends and customer needs while making it easier to work with Cisco.
“The evolution of our partner programs is a reflection of commitment to improving the overall partner experience, strengthening our joint go-to-market initiatives, and ultimately ensuring our partners succeed in owning the digital transformation space,” said Marc Surplus, vice president of Strategy, Planning and Programs, Cisco Global Partner Organization.
Cisco’s new program updates will fall in three core areas: building and recognizing capabilities, refreshing to digital, and moving to lifecycle and recurring revenue.
The technology company said the changes to the programs will assist Cisco and its channel partners to more effectively shift business to software and recurring revenue and reward partners who drive growth and profitability.
Cisco is simplifying its Specializations portfolio, transforming what it means for partners to have a Master Specialization, and recognizing partners’ industry expertise.
Cisco is simplifying its Specialization program portfolio to deliver more value to Cisco’s ecosystem of partners.
In August 2017, Cisco began the simplification process by reducing the 10 express-level specializations to one Express Specialization with tracks that cover all Cisco architectures. Cisco also reduced Advanced Specializations from 13 to five Advanced Architecture Specializations.
Cisco is retiring all Advanced Technology Specializations (except Advanced Video) and embedding technical adoption capabilities throughout the remaining Advanced Architecture Specializations, providing a path to differentiation and ensuring the same quality and level of capabilities exist across the Advanced Specializations portfolio.
This new specialization will help Cisco partners enhance their networking capabilities to deliver solutions that customers will need in the new era of networking. The Cisco Master Networking Specialization will be available starting in March 2018 and will include new software and services skill development, which other Master Specializations will later look to model.
Cisco is ramping up its industry expertise recognition to allow partners to demonstrate their unique knowledge in specific areas starting with retail, healthcare and manufacturing.
Beginning November 1, 2017, Premier Certified, Gold Certified, and Master Specialized partners who meet specific criteria may begin enrolling. Upon achieving this industry recognition with Cisco, the partner will be identified as such in Cisco Partner Locator making it easier to differentiate themselves for customers and other Ciscopartners.
According to IDC, over the next two years, 45 percent of organizations worldwide are planning to rapidly adopt a more automated and “self-driving” network that better aligns with digital business. With this opportunity, Cisco is introducing new incentives and simplifying deal registration to assist partners in enabling their customers to refresh to the digital ready networks of the future.
Cisco introduced the Migration Incentive Program (MIP), designed to offer partners a compelling offer to migrate customers with legacy or competitive products to new Cisco technologies. MIP provides partners with an incremental discount on all qualifying hardware, software, and services migration opportunities.
Cisco continues to evolve the deal registration process by three key elements: simplifying registration by consolidating 15 hunting and teaming program tracks into two, streamlining the approval process, and improving usability by allowing allowing partners to focus on selling rather than managing deal registration.
In 2018, Cisco is increasing the number of partners in its Lifecycle Advisor Program and expanding the portfolio of offers available to those Lifecycle Advisors to more areas of Cisco’s business.
Two new incentives in the Value Incentive Program (VIP) allow partners to simplify and jumpstart their software-based networking practices while enabling partners to expand their services.
VIP Activation increases the back-end rebate for Cisco ONE and Digital Network Architecture (DNA) Advantage, plus security offerings, Cisco Identity Services Engines (ISE) and Cisco Stealthwatch. This bonus encourages software to be activated as part of the Land sales motion and maximizes the number of software technologies activated in each customer.
Cisco is also helping to accelerate recurring revenue streams for partners with our rebranded VIP Annuity, expanding into Enterprise Networking and Data Center sales with performance-based recurring revenue rebates via a predictable, recurring, and simple rebate model.
