Cool cats

Being viewed as a software company was cited by Cisco as one of its key aims at its partner summit last month.

Cisco is a software company. At least that is what it wants you to believe. At last month's Cisco Partner Summit, which was held in Montreal, the networking giant talked up its credentials in the space and vowed that in just five years' time it would emerge as a software giant.

"Now I talked about software before and many of you might say ‘I don't see Cisco as a software company'," said Bruce Klein, vice president of Cisco's worldwide partner organisation, in his keynote presentation to partners.

"But did you see us as a voice company? Did you see us as a datacentre company? Did you see us a cloud company? You know where I am going with this. You don't see us as a software company maybe today? Don't bet against us! Five years from now, together, we are going to take that market. We are amazing as a software company today and we are getting bolder in software. We are going to get bolder together."

Klein's bullish address preceded the firm's unveiling of its first-ever Cisco Software Partner Programme. The new scheme will be ready to go live in 2016 and signals Cisco's strong intentions in the market, the firm claimed. Cisco execs throughout the conference hammered home the fact that nine of the last 10 acquisitions it has made have been in the software space.

"Now it's time to ignite our partner ecosystem," Klein (pictured left) added. "The new Cisco Software Partner Programme helps current and new partners capture profitable revenue streams and build competencies around software."

Wooing Wall Street

Many of the 2,000 delegates gathered at Klein's keynote speech seemed impressed with his channel-focused software message and applauded in the right places during his address. But one partner exec suggested that Cisco was really aiming to woo the markets, not just partners.

Logicalis' UK chief technology officer Chris Gabriel (pictured) said being "a little bit software" goes a long way on Wall Street.

"I think what they are saying [about software] is for Wall Street - being a software company is more profitable, so I think there is a little bit of playing to the market on that," he told CRN.

"The reason is, who are all the most valued companies in the world now? They're software-based companies. But I don't think Cisco needs to do it. WebEx is already a software brand; not everyone knows it is Cisco - that's the thing - but should they care? I think they are overthinking it."

During Cisco Partner Summit, many of the company's executives presenting on the main stage ditched snappy suits in favour of smart-casual attire, with one brave executive taking the firm's "be bold" event slogan literally and donning a fluorescent yellow shirt, with matching socks.

Gabriel suggested the executives' fashion choices were not accidental and, again, were intended to catch the eye of analysts.

"You can tell they want to be a software company because they are all wearing jeans and jackets on stage," he said. "They are trying to be a little bit ‘software'. I heard from somewhere - a reasonable source - that that's why they're doing it; they are trying to look a bit more like Facebook."

Taking its own advice

Cisco insisted that its software ambitions form part of its own plans to move with the times and stay ahead of the technology curve. Chief executive John Chambers (pictured) said that 40 per cent of today's successful enterprises will not exist in the next 10 years and used the figure to encourage partners to keep up. But he admitted that Cisco is not immune from the effects of a rapidly changing market and said he has had to make some difficult decisions himself.

"Here comes the tough part," he said. "This was the hardest for us to do at Cisco... We went from 28,000 people to 23,000 people. In two months, Pankaj [Patel, chief development officer] took out 24 of his top [staff]. He restructured not around silos and applications, but outcomes. He basically organised his organisation to move horizontally with a speed I have not seen before. Chuck [Robbins, formerly vice president for global sales and announced last week as Cisco's new CEO from July] had the courage to transform his sales organisation."

Partners dispute Cisco's IoT skills claims

Cisco kicked off its partner summit by claiming there is a "tremendous shortfall" in Internet of Things (IoT) skills in the market, warning that the issue could drag down the industry for as long as five years.

In the past nine months, Cisco has trained 38 partners globally as IoT Specialised partners, and another 94 are currently going through the process, Cisco's vice president for its Industry Solutions Group Steve Steinhilber said, adding that this should start to fill the gap.

"We've begun rolling out a series of programmes," he said. "Over the next 12 months you will see a series of other unique training courses focused on industry-vertical skills."
But some partners said that when what is now cutting-edge technology becomes mainstream, the opposite problem might in fact be the case.

Logicalis' Gabriel said: "I think we are struggling now but in the next three to five years that gap is going to disappear really quickly. I have a seven-year-old and an eleven-year-old and I can guarantee by the time my daughter is 14, in school, she will be using some sort of cloud-based analytics application in the classroom to work out the demographics of frogs in Patagonia, for example. They are going to be naturals to go into [IoT]. It sounds daft, but we may end up with too many [skilled staff]."

Softcat's managing director Colin Brown concurred and said: "I agree that there are not enough people trained up [in IoT tech] but I think there are enough people who would like to be. I think it will fix itself - people will go where the opportunity is.

"Another thing I would say on that is - and it is a bit ‘chicken or egg' - there are not so many customers doing big things with IoT yet; they are talking about it but not doing it. The last thing service providers want is to have a load of people trained up but not being used. Sitting on the bench waiting for
the call - that is expensive."

Cisco eases up on audits

Expensive and stressful annual partner audits will soon be a thing of the past for top Cisco partners, Bruce Klein announced in his speech, much to the delight of whooping partner delegates.

At the moment, top-level Cisco partners at Gold or Masters levels are checked up on by Cisco once a year to ensure they have the right technical and training accrediations, which Cisco said causes partners a lot of hassle.

So from now on, the box-ticking will happen only once every three years.
Cisco's UK managing director for partner sales Richard Roberts (pictured) said in the UK, partners thought an annual audit was just too much.

"There is a cost associated with it and if you have ever sat through an audit [you will know] it really does go through everything, from your people, your process - everything - and it should do," he told CRN.

"We are not lowering the bar here, you still have to do what you do to be a Gold partner, but if you have invested in that, it is not something you lose in a year. So to force a review every single year was probably excessive. Partners are telling us ‘don't lower the standard required to pass the audit', but moving from one year to three years will save them. You can lose days or even weeks preparing for an audit."

Robbins pipes up about HP split

Throughout the partner gathering in Montreal, Cisco tended to shy away from slating its competitors, with just a few sly digs at rivals VMware and HP slipping out occasionally. But when CRN asked Cisco's soon-to-be new CEO Chuck Robbins (pictured) about his thoughts on the upcoming HP split - where the firm will divide into a PC and printer company and a separate hardware and services firm - he far from minced his words.

"Certainly, [the HP split] is a bold decision and what I see today [is that] the market is moving so fast that when you make decisions around the structure of your business that can take a year to two years to actually execute, there is great risk," he told CRN in a Q&A session.

He added that Cisco is paying close attention to the split - as it does to all the goings-on at its competitors.

"We will see how it goes, but we have seen it create more uncertainty in the market for them which has created opportunities for us and our partners,"
he said.