Cisco unveils new services

Cisco said it would incorporate its Lifecycle Services training and enablement program into its Channel Partner Program in an attempt to give partners the ability to provide highly specialised services.

Announcing the change at Cisco’s partner summit in San Diego, the company said the program would now form a part of the training and assessment for its new Express, Advanced and Master specialisations.

Lifecycle Services training would be offered free of charge, with exams available for a nominal fee.

As part of the initiative, Cisco would make available its new e-Consulting tool which assesses partners’ services metrics and business processes and provides them with a gap analysis, recommendations and practices to improve their business results.

The tool provides suggestions on how to achieve high performance in a support organisation as well as giving key performance indicators to measure that.

Cisco VP, services marketing and channels, Karl Meulema, said services represented a profit margin of nearly three to one over equipment sales for partners.

“We are reaching an inflexion point which has led to some major changes in the biggest areas of opportunity. By way of example, the provision of data, voice and video services on our network platform represents a great opportunity for our channel partners,” he said.