Cisco sets out channel initiatives to fight economic crisis

They include an extension of its channel partner financing, the expansion of its managed services channel program, and the evolution of its flagship partner profitability program. 

The Cisco Navigate to Accelerate initiative will help channel partners improve their business in four areas:  financial strength, generating new business from existing customers, meeting the changing needs of customers, and preparing for future growth.

Edison Peres, senior VP, Go-to-Market Group, Worldwide Channels, Cisco, said the company is actively working with its channel partners to navigate the current economic challenges while investing for future growth. 

"As channel partners look for help to navigate the challenging economic environment, we continue to expand our channel financing program and open up the program for more channel partners to participate," he said. 

"To prepare channel partners to 'accelerate' during the economic upturn, we have made important announcements to invest in our channel partners' long-term viability and growth. 

"Evolving our Value Incentive Program and unveiling our next generation MSCP will help channel partners capture market transitions and increase profitability."

Financial initiative;

Cisco is investing in channel financing to support partners with working capital during the economic downturn.

It has provided the credit support to drive an additional US$2 billion in sales since October 2008 and extended its channel financing terms to 90 days, which provides a six-month financing stimulus package to partners that are currently participating.

Expansion efforts will be focused in Asia Pacific and Europe.

Cisco Managed Services Channel Progra;

To help reward and support managed services providers, Cisco is launching the next generation of its Managed Services Channel Program (MSCP).

To allow more channel partners to participate in the program, MSCP lowered the barrier to entry and now enables partner-to-partner collaboration through a "white label" arrangement that allows two partners to work together to deliver a managed service using one network operations centre.

To simplify MSCP, Cisco is providing a single discount, based on the partner level attained in MSCP, across all its products that the partner manages.

At the top level of MSCP, it is branding partners as Master Managed Services Partner to reflect the highest depth of capability.

Cisco Value Incentive Program;

Cisco is evolving its Value Incentive Program (VIP) as its channel partners look to invest in architectural capabilities around collaboration, virtualisation and borderless network.

VIP was originally introduced in 2003 to enable channel partners to build up their advanced technology practices, and currently supports unified communications, security, wireless and data centre. 

For the first time, VIP will reward channel partners for selling routing, switching, storage networking, wide-area networking optimisation and emerging technologies, such as Cisco TelePresence^T, into one of the architectural plays:  collaboration, virtualisation and borderless network.

Cisco is offering partners the Smart Business Architecture for Mid-sized Networks as part of the borderless network architecture. 

Designed for businesses with 250 to 1,000 employees, the architecture offers partners prescriptive network design and deployment best practices, and includes switching, routing, wireless, unified communications, wide area networking optimization, security, and network management technologies.

Final details on VIP enhancements will coincide with the rollout of VIP 14 in the beginning of FY10 (August 2009)

Cisco will have a 90-day transition to the new MSCP requirements and will begin accepting applications under the new rules on 31st August.