Cisco's growing partner base leads to new incentive

The number of Cisco's certified partners has gone up by 5.2 percent in the past year and a half, raising the vendor's certified partner level to 12,600, globally.

Over the past five quarters, the number of Cisco gold partners grew by 55, silver increased by 4, premier partners by 128 and select partners grew by 433.

Advanced (technology) specialists, increased by 5.6 percent, while the number of Cisco's highest level technical individuals - CCIE badges went up by 17 percent.

"We have 60,000 partners in total - 12,600 are certified," said Cisco executive Edison Peres, senior vice president for Cisco's Worldwide Partner Organisation during a partner strategy webcast.

"Ninety percent of the business we do is done through these certified partners, they're the partners that have invested in Cisco and are now seeing the value in that relationship," he said.

Incentive programs

Peres said, Cisco was on the verge of announcing a new incentive program, dubbed the Teaming Incentive Program (TIP).

The program would be for situations where Cisco finds an opportunity, and the vendor wants to team with a particular partner to be able to work with during the pre-sales part of the process.

Currently, Cisco has three incentive programs to engage its partners with. Cisco's Opportunity Incentive program (OIP) - gives discounts to partners for finding new deals and customers on their own.

Cisco's Solution Incentive program (SIP)  is based around proving a solution for a business issue. If a partner has an application they want to integrate with Cisco, which solves a business issue, Cisco offers discounts.

Thirdly, Cisco's Value Incentive program (VIP), which Peres claimed, was the "most successful" - it supports partners in developing a focused  technology practise - whether its unified communications, security, or mobility, Cisco offers resellers a rebate.

Satisfaction

Cisco has also revealed the satisfaction levels of its partners, which were tracked over the past five quarters. By surveying partners around the world, Cisco looked at the investments partners had made in the vendor, and how much Cisco has influenced the partner's bottom line.

Peres claimed, partner satisfaction was at "an all time high" including partner loyalty to Cisco, and total average of wallet share - the total share of business done through Cisco.

"The great thing is that even in a down market, the actual investment into the Cisco relationship is increasing. Partnering is a fundamental element of our DNA. We have many different types of partners: technology partners, services partners, consulting partners, our focus here is really on our channel reseller partners," said Peres.  

Chris Marshall, managing director of Blue Apache (CRN Fast50 No.20) and Cisco partner, said his satisfaction with Cisco is "definitely at an all time high".

"Around the resources that they're allocating, we've never been more tightly engaged with Cisco, even though our [account manager] is based off-shore, we see fantastic support and services, training and certification programs.

"They seem to be engaging with their distribution partners more. Cisco recently held a sales and marketing event with Express Data," Marshall told CRN.

The Not For Resale (NFR) program, which allows partners access to Cisco kit at lower prices helps Marshall adopt Cisco's technology in house [as well], he said.