Cisco Extends Opex Payment Model Across 'All Products, All SKUs' For Partners

Cisco is extending its Capital Easy Pay financing across all of its solutions and SKUs for U.S. channel partners, the company said at Cisco Partner Connection Week 2017.

The goal is to give channel partners a way to more easily line up their product and technology payments with anticipated revenue, especially as they transition customers to a more software- and cloud-centric infrastructure.

"We want you to go off and win and not be afraid if your customer says, 'I want to take a look at this as Opex instead of Capex,'" said Nirav Sheth, vice president of solutions, architecture and engineering for Cisco's Global Partner Organization, on stage in front of hundreds of channel partners in Miami. "In the US, we're going to start to roll [Capital Easy Pay] out to all architectures, all products, all SKUs – it doesn't matter," he said.

[Related: Cisco Closes $3.7 Billion Acquisition Of AppDynamics To Build The 'Next Software Franchise']

Launched last year for Cisco's service-centric Digital Network Architecture, the vendor's Capital Easy Pay allows partners to sell zero-percent finance leasing options. Customers pay 90 percent of the total solution over a three-year period that is completely interest-free.

"For you as a partner, when that lease ends, it automatically results in a refresh conversation," said Sheth.

Sheth said the San Jose, Calif.-based network leader would be rolling out the offer to partners outside of the U.S. shortly.

Cisco Partner Connection Week runs from March 28 to March 30.