Cisco Webex Rolling Out Partner Demo Catalog

CISCO PARTNER SUMMIT — IT giant Cisco is ready at its annual Partner Summit this week to unveil a Webex partner demo catalog that will feature an extensive list of partners in each city who have their offices decked out with the technology a potential customer seeks.

What's more, there are photos of those offices with "demo capabilities as good as ours," Kristyn Hogan, vice president of Cisco's global collaboration partner sales efforts, told Channel Futures at last week's WebexOne event in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

"While our strategy has evolved quite a bit during my 21 years with Cisco, there is one thing that has not changed. If you look at the percentage of business that goes through the channel in collaboration, it's a straight line," said Hogan.

Cisco Webex Partners, Building Advanced Showcases

There are a variety of ways partners are using Webex devices as well. That includes creating an immersive office experience that features mapping desks, microphones — even devices that can control the room's temperature.

All of this fits into the Webex theme of reimagining the modern office in a time of hybrid work spent between the office and home. Cisco hopes to address many of the concerns shared by workers − everything from background noise to the physical barriers if you can't attend a meeting in person − via partnerships in place with Apple and the Vision Pro.

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Hogan said that with customers in nearly every city, sometimes they can't fly to one of the many Cisco office locations all the time, so partners are building their own showcase offices, looking to present what is possible in a "workplace reimagined."

"What we have realized is that not every customer will fly to one of those cities, so many of our partners have deployed end-to-end Cisco in their workspace so customers can go to an office closer to them," Hogan told Channel Futures.

This practice, in theory, will make it simpler to make a sale or to close a deal.

More than 300,000 Cisco Webex Partners

Although Cisco has a dedicated 18,000-person-strong global sales team, the company's channel sales lead stressed a lack of competition between direct and indrect, noting that the number of Cisco Webex channel partners far exceeds its sales team, with that number today being more than 300,000.

"We need our partners for many reasons, but first and foremost is that ability to scale, to take this message out to the masses," said Hogan.

Regarding AI, Hogan said everything Webex is doing ties together cohesively, especially its latest barrage of AI features, set to launch next quarter.

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They span the entire Webex portfolio, adding value where the customer wishes to enhance certain parts of their business. That could be via a hyper-realistic AI assistant or merely ensuring you don't miss a beat if you step away from a meeting. Cisco introduced these features at last week's WebexOne event.

Opportunity Ahead for Cisco Webex Partners

Hogan says Webex's latest onslaught of AI features holds much promise for partners looking to make money with Cisco's collaboration arm, even though many are still trying to figure out how to make money with AI.

"Big Cisco looks at AI from the lens of how we equip our customers to have a network and a data center ready to support AI, while on the collaboration side, we are helping customers deliver that AI functionality," Hogan said.

With Webex going all-in on AI, Hogan said partners, who have had a chance to demo it, are keen to get much of this functionality into the hands of customers.

"Our partners who use our offerings sell more of our products as a result because it makes it easier to show customers what is possible," Hogan said.

Two years ago, Webex started to give its collaboration software to partners. And on the hardware side, partners can access it for an 85% discount to stay ahead of the curve.

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"On the device front, when looking at the cold hard data, their deals are worth seven time more than those partners who do not," Hogan said.

She added that this conversation is vastly different than one from several years ago.

"When we started to make that move to the cloud, the No. 1 question from partners facing uncertainty would have been, 'What is our role in a collaboration-first world?'"

Hogan said Webex sales efforts are "100% channel-led" and that Cisco's collaboration arm will continue to double-down on partners.