DiData admits Cisco's direct push caused 'tense' relationship

An Australian Dimension Data executive said that a “tense” relationship with Cisco due to channel conflict has now softened.

At the Cisco Partner Summit in San Diego, Dimension Data global security group executive Matt Gyde said the provider has been growing its security services by more than 80 percent in the “last couple of years”.

“We’ve seen an enormous amount of opportunity,” he said, adding that Dimension Data has “pushed back pretty hard” on Cisco providing any service directly to a customer.

“We want to be a full lifecycle partner. We personally feel that we add more value to our clients because of our experience across multiple domains and multiple technologies.”

Gyde, who is now based in Singapore, admitted that the channel conflict had caused friction in the past between the vendor and the solutions provider. “It was a tense relationship. I think we have worked through a lot of those issues together.

"Once again, that’s one of the great things about working with Cisco. We can sit down and have an argument, but get it sorted out for the betterment of both organisations," Gyde added.

Cisco security success

Cisco's security general manager, David Goeckeler, used the panel discussion to claim the company is the “largest enterprise security vendor by market share”, but admitted the message is drowned out in “a very noisy market”.

“Going up the road this week to RSA [conference] in San Francisco... there are probably  500 vendors there all competing for attention," said Goeckeler.

Gyde said that customers’ IT security budgets seemed to be growing, with upper management realising that security failures have serious consequences. “[Customer board members] are very very aware now that they’ll end up in jail if something goes wrong. So there’s a commitment there to spend.”

With the amount of work out there, DiData and Cisco are now more comfortable with their roles, according to Gyde, with flexibility shown on both sides depending on customer circumstance.

“Whenever we need help, David [Goeckeler] and his team will get on planes any time of the day to come and support us,” he said. “Anytime we’re short of staff, Cisco will absolutely step in and help us.”

The journalist travelled to San Diego courtesy of Cisco.