Cisco new Partner Operations Director to make ‘tweaks’ to channel programs

He will be responsible for partner profitability and growth in those regions and help to drive customer productivity.

According to Lehmann, who has been in the job for three weeks, he will be working closely with resellers to make them as efficient as possible and to get them through the economic crisis by forward planning and collaborating with them on all programs.

“The vast majority of our business is done through the channel and there is no foreseeable change to that,” he said.

“Cisco is a very strong vendor and we are here for the long term. We will continue our emphasis on profitability but we are not sure what the frame on the canvas is.

“We have some strong programs in place already but we may tweak them over the next 12-18 months. I don’t have anything specific to say about that at the moment. We haven’t finalised our channel thoughts yet.”

Lehmann said he will focus on improving collaboration with partners to create revenue generation with end customers in enterprise, service providers and small to medium business sectors.

He will be developing solutions for partners to go to market with in unified communications, video, data centre and virtualisation and mobility and security technologies.

He will be based in Sydney and report to Les Williamson, vice president A/NZ Cisco.

“Michael has extensive experience specifically with both the channel and Cisco, so we will certainly benefit from his experience, skills and enthusiasm,” said Williamson.

“Michael’s most recent leadership role with Intuition Consulting saw him drive both the local and global Cisco partner profitability and business model success. Michael’s empathy with and knowledge of the channel are significant assets,” he added.

Lehmann, who previously worked for Tech Pacific, which was acquired by Ingram Micro, is replacing Jeff Sheard, who left Cisco mid 2008.