Cisco 360 A 'Modern' Channel Program That Puts AI At The Center: Exclusive

‘The foundation of our program was hardware and transaction. That's who we were as a company at the time and that served us well … but what it rewarded was a partner who transacts, and the way that we do business today is quite different. It's the first material shift in how we evaluate partners since the original push into the [partner] ecosystem,’ Cisco Channel Chief Rodney Clark tells CRN of Cisco 360, the all-new partner program.

The iconic partner program known for its ability to fund major industry transitions for Cisco partners is getting its biggest refresh in the history of the company.

Cisco 360, the new partner program that the tech giant revealed on Monday at Cisco Partner Summit 2024, was built to attract more MSPs and MSSPs with its focus on the value partners bring over transactions. It represents a marked break from the biggest payouts going to partners landing large, capex infrastructure deals.

"The foundation of our program was hardware and transaction. That's who we were as a company at the time and that served us well … but what it rewarded was, through a rebate mechanism and a number of other discounting mechanisms, a partner who transacts, and the way that we do business today is quite different, our customer expectations are quite different and we wanted our program to reflect that," Rodney Clark, senior vice president of partnerships and small and medium business for Cisco Systems, told CRN in an exclusive interview. "It's the first material shift in how we evaluate partners since the original push into the [partner] ecosystem."

The new program recognizes a new era in which networking services, security and AI are king. The company's pivot to rewarding based on value will open the door to "boutique" security and networking partners, Clark said.

"The way that we designed this is, because we're pivoting from transaction and across the value index, it actually gives way to those partners who are specialty partners in things like security and networking. It gives way to those boutique partners who maybe are very highly specialized, but important to us from an ecosystem standpoint," said Clark.

The Cisco 360 program will do away with separate partner programs and incentives such as VIP, Perform Plus, and the Cisco Services Partner Program, or CSPP. These will be folded into a single structure called Cisco Partner Incentive (CPI), which was first discussed during the 2023 Partner Summit. CPI will mirror the overall value index that will measure partners across four areas: the foundational, capabilities, performance and engagement, Clark said.

The illustrious Cisco Gold partner designation is also going away in the new program, and in its place will be two designations: Cisco Partner and Cisco Preferred Partner. Cisco partners can earn these designations for each portfolio, such as security or networking, the company said.

"It's definitely a modern program for us that puts AI at the center. It's a program that's based on partners building capability and delivering value across five areas for us: networking, security, observability, collaboration, cloud, and across that is this thread of AI," Clark said. "It allows us to establish value in each of the architectures, and then also reward partners who cut across our architectures and deliver on AI-specific outcomes."

The new program replaces Cisco's current complex incentive system with a more predictable structure that's better aligned with how Cisco wants to do business; by driving software adoption and business outcomes, said Stephen Bland, group alliance director for U.K.-based global solution provider Computacenter, one of Cisco's largest Gold partners.

Computacenter is one of the partners that has been working with Cisco behind the scenes to overhaul the partner program.

"As Cisco has evolved with a broader product range and different routes to market, I think the existing partner programs perhaps have become increasingly complex and time-consuming for partners to manage," Bland said. "I think it was very appropriate and good timing to have a complete refresh and look at it from scratch to reflect on the way Cisco has changed, the markets change, and to simplify and take away some of the existing complexity."

Cisco is a very large organization with partners all over the world who will have to adapt to the new program. To that end, the new program won’t go into effect until February 2026.

"We really have to get into details on the new metrics, the rewards and how we earn money. There's still a bit of a learning process to go through, and that's why Cisco is [spending] the next 15 months sharing more details and piloting it, so that when it goes live, it's well understood by partners. They're not doing this quickly. It's such a big change it will take time for their partners and Cisco themselves to really understand what this means in the marketplace," Bland said.

In the meantime, Cisco wants to help protect the investments of its partners, Clark said.

"If you're a Gold partner today, you get to continue driving on the investments that you've made, and we protect that investment all the way through to our program in 2026. The reason that we're giving so much time is so that we can be open and transparent with partners around the requirements across the new value index and ultimately what that means in this new Cisco 360 partner program. We'll be working with all of our partners to ensure that they are playing as high up that value index as possible," he said.

Cisco 360 will also include the Splunk Partnerverse program, which is being merged into the new program over the next 15 months, Clark said.

Along the way, there will be incentives that allow partners to drive deeper into networking, security and observability, he said.

"We have specializations in security as well as observability that will be honored -- back to protecting the investments -- that will allow those Splunk partners who've invested in their journey to be able to bring that investment over into the Cisco partner program, as well as those Cisco partners who, who've started to cross invest in Splunk, allowing them to bridge that investment into the Cisco 360 partner program."

Honoring The Legacy

While Cisco 360 is a massive revamp to the company's existing partner programming structure, the company will honor its history of hardware and networking, which continues to be central to Cisco, while helping to uplevel these classic Cisco partners, Clark said.

"[We're] looking at introducing this notion of value. So, transaction, but also with the ability to build capabilities and how we actually manage lifecycle and overall practice maturity, looking at the investments that partners may make in skilling and training and putting some value on that, looking at the overall performance metrics and adding things the ability to drive the land, expand, adopt, renew, motion, [which is] a big part of our services strategy," he said of the biggest change to the partner program in three decades.

To help partners make the shift, Cisco also revealed $80 million in new partner investment and enablement, with $60 million of that investment going to support qualified partners with benefits including all-access Cisco U. subscriptions for skill development and certification. An additional $20 million will fund quarterly training events for all partners, focusing on AI, security and networking through self-paced learning, hands-on labs, and continuing education credits, the company said.

"We're really making an effort to make sure that, again, all investments are protected and we're giving enough runway and lead time for partners to establish themselves in the new designations," Clark said.