Cisco Channel Partners See New Security Incentives, More UC&C Access
Cisco's collaboration channel leader shared about the expansion Cisco is making with partners that sell its cloud contact center offering.
![incentives for Cisco channel partners incentives for Cisco channel partners](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blt641aa8fdab6e8e2d/6523f9f04db2556d37778e99/Incentives-with-Money.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Shutterstock
Cisco at the RSA Conference last month unveiled its extended detection and response (XDR) offering.
The offering for now operates in beta mode, and it will go live in July. Shawn Yuskaitis, Cisco’s security director for global partner and routes-to-market sales, said Cisco XDR is “designed by SOC experts for SOC experts.”
Yuskaitis said the solution tackles the problem of immense vendor and technology sprawl that resulted from trends like hybrid cloud and hybrid work.
“We’ve got all this technology within our environments. And what is unique about Cisco XDR is that is moving away from endless investigation across multiple tools to really focusing in on remediating around the highest priority of the incidents with evidence-backed automation, helping our SOC engineers act with greater speed, efficiency and competence,” he told Channel Futures.
Yuskaitis (pictured above) said partners and customers have played an important role in providing feedback on the platform.
“We see this as creating a very compelling opportunity for our partners as we move forward both within a standard customer environment as well as really looking at how this creates a managed security service for our partners in the future,” he told Channel Futures.
Cisco partner leaders said in a media roundtable in April that they want to expand Cisco’s reputation as a “networking” giant to include a reputation for cybersecurity.
Those executives argued that 75% of organizations are seeking to consolidate their vendors in some way. And that could position Cisco as the consolidator.
“There are hundreds if not multiple hundreds actually, of security vendors that provide that niche or that point solution out there,” Emma Carpenter, Cisco‘s global security sales leader, said last month. “But who ties it all together? Who has the ability to purview from the inception point into the network, through into managing the security operations center (SOC) and out through into the network environment? That’s Cisco.”
Cisco also recently brought changes to its Duo multifactor authentication (MFA) and single sign-on portfolio.
First, the vendor has changed Duo’s branding so that its three tiers fit into the traditional Cisco nomenclature of essential, advantage and premier.
Moreover, Cisco has brought its Duo Trusted Endpoints capability into all three tiers. Previously that feature existed in only the premier level (formerly known as the beyond level). Now it will exist at the essentials and advantage levels.
The Trusted Endpoints capability lets users block access to unknown devices on their network, ensuring that “only trusted devices” are dealing with critical resources. It can also scan the health of those trusted devices.
Yuskaitis said the update meets the trend of an increasing number of cyberattacks.
“We’re doing this because we’re seeing that attackers are increasingly targeting gaps within weaker multifactor authentication implementations,” he told Channel Futures. “This will provide a really truly differentiated, multilayered defense to block unknown access.”
Moreover, he said deepening the capabilities within Duo’s lower tiers gives partners a competitive advantage.
“We think this is going to really help our partners, as it provides a very differentiated opportunity against other solutions that are out there in the market that typically charge a lot more money for this capability,” he said.
Cisco also recently unveiled its “Security Step-Up” promotion. That incentive rewards partners who sell Duo MFA, cloud-delivered security and email threat defense together.
The promotion, he said, goes to simplify product consumption while also tackling partner profitability. Asked about the details of the promotion, Yaskaitis described it as cotaining “very lucrative upfront discounts.” It also contains incentives specific to the partner’s sellers and engineers.
Yaskaitis said many partners have already sold those offerings separate of one another.
“They can now go back in with this very aggressive offer and step up the overall security posture of their customers,” he said.
Cisco gave partners and customers an opportunity to defer payments on its solutions until 2024 through its new Cisco Capital Business Acceleration Program.
The vendor earlier this month announced the program, which exists as part of the larger Cisco Capital business financing wing. Businesses that purchase Cisco hardware, software or services before July 29 can wait till the new year to make a payment. Cisco executives say the latest initiative tackles the problem of cash flow that many businesses are facing during the macroeconomic downturn.
“The Cisco Capital Business Acceleration Program is in response to customer and partner requests to help mitigate financial challenges based on overall market uncertainty and the impact that it is having on their businesses. Our goal is to provide payment options that allow continuous technology investment to maintain productivity and business continuity while minimizing cash outlays,” Cisco Capital senior vice president and president Kristine Snow said. “Customer success is our priority. The new program is designed with this in mind and will help address some of our customers’ most pressing concerns.”
The payment deferments depend on the contract terms and how much customers had financed with Cisco, according to a news release. The initiative applies to certain third-party services and products in addition to Cisco solutions.
Read more about the program.
Hogan said many telecommunication service providers over the years have used Cisco’s HCS hosted collaboration solution.
But in recent years, Cisco has been partnering with service providers to migrate users into the Webex Cloud platform.
She pointed to NTT’s recent decision to migrate 2 million HCS seats for joint customers to the Cisco Webex cloud platform over a three-year timeline.
“We are in great partnership with all of these service providers migrating those customers off of HCS and into our cloud,” Hogan told Channel Futures.
In the meantime, Cisco last summer announced a Webex managed services offering geared toward wholesale partners. That offering concerns the BroadSoft-based BroadWorks platform, which Hogan said small business customers are using en masse. Hogan said Cisco birthed the wholesale motion to give service providers a resource to migrate customers into Webex Cloud.
The program allows service providers to leverage a single commercial contract for their downstream SMB customers, rather than renegogiate the price on every deal.
“Long-term, all roads are going to lead to our our WebEx Cloud. We’re not turning off BroadSoft tomorrow, but we wanted to get an offer out in market to help these service providers begin to transition their BroadSoft base into our platform,” Hogan said.
Read more about that wholesale announcement.
In addition to opening up contact center to the technology advisor/agent market, Cisco has also opened up that portfolio to more members of its reseller base. Cisco allows any collaboration-certified partner to sell contact center.
Previously, only about 300 elite partners could sell contact center from Cisco. The company historically kept that number small to make sure it was making on-premises contact center deployments bespoke for enterprise customers.
But now the vendor is turning to more partners to offer the cloud-based version to smaller customers, Hogan said. And she said pipeline is growing.
“For contact center, it is up and to the right. We’re seeing a lot more partner-led contact center opportunities down-market,” she said.
Cisco recently launched the latest iteration of its annual Partner Innovation challenge.
Partners submit an application for awards of $200,000 for first place, $100,000 for second or $50,000 for third. The program also recognizes different regional winners, including in Asia Pacific, Japan and China (APJC).
Most recently, Cisco has added a “Partnering for Purpose” category, which rewards elements such as digital inclusion and sustainability.
Cisco pointed to Australian systems integrator and MSP Outcomex, which has won awards in both global and AJPC award categories. Its 2021 winnings totaled more than $250,000.
The Partner Innovation Challenge started in 2018 and has doled out more than $2.7 million since. Executives add that more than 80% of submissions come from new partners.
Cisco gave partners and customers an opportunity to defer payments on its solutions until 2024 through its new Cisco Capital Business Acceleration Program.
The vendor earlier this month announced the program, which exists as part of the larger Cisco Capital business financing wing. Businesses that purchase Cisco hardware, software or services before July 29 can wait till the new year to make a payment. Cisco executives say the latest initiative tackles the problem of cash flow that many businesses are facing during the macroeconomic downturn.
“The Cisco Capital Business Acceleration Program is in response to customer and partner requests to help mitigate financial challenges based on overall market uncertainty and the impact that it is having on their businesses. Our goal is to provide payment options that allow continuous technology investment to maintain productivity and business continuity while minimizing cash outlays,” Cisco Capital senior vice president and president Kristine Snow said. “Customer success is our priority. The new program is designed with this in mind and will help address some of our customers’ most pressing concerns.”
The payment deferments depend on the contract terms and how much customers had financed with Cisco, according to a news release. The initiative applies to certain third-party services and products in addition to Cisco solutions.
Read more about the program.
Cisco gave partners and customers an opportunity to defer payments on its solutions until 2024 through its new Cisco Capital Business Acceleration Program.
The vendor earlier this month announced the program, which exists as part of the larger Cisco Capital business financing wing. Businesses that purchase Cisco hardware, software or services before July 29 can wait till the new year to make a payment. Cisco executives say the latest initiative tackles the problem of cash flow that many businesses are facing during the macroeconomic downturn.
“The Cisco Capital Business Acceleration Program is in response to customer and partner requests to help mitigate financial challenges based on overall market uncertainty and the impact that it is having on their businesses. Our goal is to provide payment options that allow continuous technology investment to maintain productivity and business continuity while minimizing cash outlays,” Cisco Capital senior vice president and president Kristine Snow said. “Customer success is our priority. The new program is designed with this in mind and will help address some of our customers’ most pressing concerns.”
The payment deferments depend on the contract terms and how much customers had financed with Cisco, according to a news release. The initiative applies to certain third-party services and products in addition to Cisco solutions.
Read more about the program.
As Cisco plans to make its extended detection and response (XDR) offering generally available later this year, the vendor is making changes to other parts of its cybersecurity portfolio to give Cisco channel partners more incentives and value.
Cisco XDR, recently unveiled at the RSA Conference, hits the mainstream in July. But in the meantime, Cisco has launched upfront discounts for partners that sell Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense, Cisco Umbrella Secure Internet Gateway (SIG) and Duo multifactor authentication and single sign-on in a single offer. That “Security Step-Up” promotion gives “highly aggressive” incentives to partners.
At the same time, Cisco is coming off two years that featured a flurry of new partnerships on its collaboration side. Those alliances spanned all across the channel ecosystem. They include a technology partnership with Microsoft to integrate Teams Rooms with Webex video devices, new relationships with agent-focused technology services distributors for UCaaS and more recently CCaaS, and agreements with service providers to migrate hosted voice users to Webex Cloud.
(Above: Our James Anderson speaks with Cisco’s Alexandra Zagury on Channel Futures TV at the 2023 Channel Partners Conference & Expo.)
In other news, Cisco earlier this month gave partners and customers a new financing option to help them through difficult economic conditions where immediate cash may be sparse.
Channel Futures spoke to Shawn Yuskaitis, Cisco’s security director for global partner and routes-to-market sales, and Kristyn Hogan, Cisco’s vice president of global collaboration partner sales, about how the vendor is going to market with Cisco channel partners in the areas of cybersecurity and collaboration, respectfully. See the slideshow above for all of the channel news coming out of the Cisco camp.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email James Anderson or connect with him on LinkedIn. |
About the Author(s)
You May Also Like