Cisco restructures global partner program

Cisco announced a raft of changes to its global partner program and certifications, effectively telling its 2200 partners worldwide to lift their game if they are serious about capitalising on growth opportunities in the networking market.

The networker’s Channel Partner Program would reward partners that developed integrated advanced networks, security services, unified communications applications and other specialised solutions, Edison Peres, Cisco’s VP, worldwide channel programs announced at its partner summit in San Diego in the US.

Under the program, Gold, Silver and Premier certifications were changed to accurately reflect the partner’s skills across several key technologies such as security, WLANs, routing, LAN switching and, optionally, Unified Communications.

Gold Certified Partners would have to reflect the highest level of integrated infrastructure capability, as well as capabilities in routing and switching, security, WLAN and Unified Communications.

The new program gave a broader range of partners the opportunity to become experts in specialised areas with higher levels of training and support from Cisco,” Peres said.

The changes would occur over two years, giving channel partners until March 2008 to complete the enhanced program requirements.

Peres said the changes “challenged” partners to update their business models to deliver the best technology available and was the result of `18 months of partner consultation.

“We strongly believe that the direction we are taking will create opportunities for growth, differentiation and profitability for our partners.

“However, Cisco partners must be able to deliver a particular solution from end-to-end according to a customer’s exact specifications.

“If partners lose particular skills sets, they will be replaced by somebody else under our annual certification process,” he said.

Cisco also launched the Advanced Technology Skills Depth initiative, whereby Cisco specialisations will now reflect a partner’s depth of expertise in a technology.

It launched Express, Advanced and Master specialisations levels where a partner must demonstrate greater sales, technical and service capabilities for each level.

Master specialisation recognised partners with the very highest practice in a specialised brand and allowed partners to further differentiate their brand.

Peres said the Master branding would be a boon for end users, who will be able to opt for a partner with the highest possible skills.

The first Master Unified Communications and Master Security specialisation would be launched over the next two years.

Cisco had not placed any limits on the number of partners that could achieve Master accreditation, and it was possible for a partner to become a Master without having already achieved Gold status.

Alan Harstein travelled to San Diego as a guest of Cisco Systems.

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