Cisco 360 Partner Program launches in Australia

Cisco has launched its new Cisco 360 Partner Program, retiring its Value Incentive Program that was in place for 23 years.

The new program eschews the traditional 'metal tiers' approach (bronze, silver, gold etc), which primarily rewarded sales volume, in favour of rewarding partners for full lifecycle performance in specialised areas.

The networking giant’s MD of partner and routes to market sales for ANZ, Rodney Hamill, told techpartner.news that the new program unifies various aspects that had been “bolted on” to the previous program over its two-decade history.

"All the rewards [now] aren't just about land(ing a deal); they're actually across the entire customer journey, from onboarding and adoption, and then [how the partner's] driving that customer outcome,” he said.

Hamill said partners that are simply focused on closing deals and then moving on will need to rethink their approach to maintain their incentive levels under the new program.

“We've seen a big uptick in terms of partners investing in lifecycle as a result of us bringing in these program changes, and that, on our part, is deliberate because we think that lifecycle and customer outcome is extremely important for our customers,” he said.

Seven pillars, new tiering system

Cisco 360 is split into seven pillars to allow partners to gain recognition in their area of focus.

These cover networking, cloud and AI infrastructure, security, Splunk, collaboration, services and mass-scale infrastructure.

Hamill explained that while the old metal tiers were gone, there was a new, more granular tiering system based on the specialisations.

Within Cisco 360, partners that reach a value index of 5.0 in a given portfolio will be able to add the portfolio name to their designation e.g. Cisco Security Partner.

Partners that reach a value index of 7.5 in a given portfolio can use the new Cisco Preferred Partner designation e.g. Cisco Preferred Security Partner. 

Hamill said this allows partners to put their resources into excelling where they choose.

“They can achieve a Cisco preferred status in security, for example, without having to worry about achieving those preferred statuses in the other categories," he explained.

This granularity will also aim to provide more clarity for customers when they are looking for the appropriate partner for their needs.

With the company now aiming to drive a unified product approach and recognising partners who are taking the breadth of Cisco offerings out to the market, the Cisco 360 partner program will reward partners who cross-sell technology architectures. 

For those who are a Cisco preferred partner in both networking and security, they will now be able to apply for a Cisco secure networking partner specialisation, which will result in additional incentives when the two technology stacks are sold together.

"We're looking more broadly across our entire portfolio - how do we get this into the hands of our customers? We want to incentivise our partners to bring more of our portfolio strengths together and drive those outcomes," Hamill said.

New rating system introduced

Partners will be rated monthly, and the highest rating they achieve will stick for the six months following.

However, the first round of ratings will last until August 2027, including any that are undertaken in the six months prior to, or the 12 months following, the program’s launch, which happened on Sunday.

Hamill said that Cisco has been working with partners since November 2024, when the new program was first revealed, to support their transition to the lifecycle-focused approach and will continue to do so, creating a dedicated team to help with the transition.

Cisco expects this program to have a shelf-life at least as long as its previous program and has been designed with modularity in mind to ensure this, he said.

“We believe that we need to have a partner program that is agile, and it can really respond to the emerging trends in market, and we believe this is the program for us," he told techpartner.news.

"The way we've built it, it's modularised. We can insert new incentives over time and we can adjust as the market needs."