Quietly confident

2016 has been a busy year for the channel, with vendors such as Dell EMC, HP and HPE keen to shout about their channel credentials as they complete landmark years. Cisco, meanwhile, maintains that its decades-long channel focus is stronger than ever

Conventional wisdom might dictate that in order to best get one's message across, one should be the loudest. And in the channel this year, it appears to have been the case. HP and HPE have just celebrated their first year as independent companies, and throughout their first 12 months on their own have been extremely vocal about their channel plans. At the same time, Dell EMC has spoken up in the run-up to, and in the immediate aftermath of its historic merger - with the new entity desperate to talk up its channel credentials, especially considering its direct heritage. In fact, across one fortnight in September, Dell EMC spoke at or hosted three channel events: Michael Dell spoke at the Canalys Forum in Barcelona, the following day the vendor held its own Forum in London, and the next week it hosted thousands of partners at Dell EMC World in Austin.

Cisco, on the other hand, has been comparatively quiet, according to some of its partners, who noted that the firm has been flying under the radar this year, quietly working on its strategy, but hardly shouting about it.

The company has undergone a number of changes internally, with plans under way to cut 5,500 global jobs. In the UK, long-standing CEO Phil Smith stood down, handing over the top job to Scot Gardner. Even its UK channel has had a makeover, with channel veteran Richard Roberts leaving the company, giving Angela Whitty full responsibility for the country's channel business. Prior to Roberts' departure, he was managing director of UK commercial and partner sales, and worked alongside Whitty, who was, and continues to be, its MD for Cisco's UK partner organisation.

Cisco hosted just over 2,000 partner delegates in San Francisco this week, for its second Partner Summit of the year. It held the event in San Diego in March, but it announced this would be the last spring event as it looked to better align the Partner Summit with its sales kick-off and fiscal new year in the autumn. As such, rather than wait 18 months between the summits, it decided to have two in 2016 as a one-off.

During a press Q&A at the gathering, CRN put partners' claims that Cisco has been quiet in the channel this year, compared with other large IT vendors such as Dell EMC, HP and HPE, to its CEO Chuck Robbins (pictured), who insisted its partner focus is unwavering.

"Sometimes companies, when you haven't been active in the channel, you feel you need to be much louder to get their attention," he said. "We've been consistent for 20 years. So that was one of the messages today: we've been in this a long time. I've been meeting a lot of you for many years in this space. It's part of who we are and what we do.

"For us to stand up and say 'channel this and channel that' people are like 'well of course, because that's what you do'. I'm very comfortable that we've been consistent with our partner community for 20 years. Not to say we don't have things we get wrong sometimes and have to fix, but we have a level of trust that when we do, we fix them. And that has helped us navigate the transitions we've gone through together over the past couple of decades."

"They don't have to [shout] and that belies a real confidence they have. There's an underlying, absolute confidence that the strategy, which has been set well, is the right one."

Colin Brown, managing director of Softcat, said he does think Cisco has been quiet, but that is not necessarily a criticism of the vendor.

"I think they have [been quiet] but they've done that deliberately," he said. "As Chuck Robbins was saying, in this cloud environment, they had to work out what they are doing and what they're not doing. It's probably part of bedding in and there have been changes; they are focusing a lot on that. I think it has been a quietish year for them but they're building up. But certainly it's better to have a quiet year than to talk about other things [for the sake of it].

"We do all major vendors and a lot of un-major vendors as well. I don't even have to think about whether Cisco is channel friendly because it just is. It's integral and part of the DNA. We really trust them. But with other vendors, there may be a lack of trust in some areas."

CAE's managing director Justin Harling (pictured, right) agreed and said: "I think from a channel perspective, with Cisco, it is a given. They don't need to shout about how grateful they are for a channel because it's absolutely been seen as a given, which is good. It's just a more understated approach and there is a subtlety to it which is no bad thing at the moment. Given a lot of other things going on, Cisco can afford to take that approach because a lot of the things they're talking about have been built up over years. On that basis, it's different but just reflects where they are. They don't have to [shout] and that belies a real confidence they have. There's an underlying, absolute confidence that the strategy, which has been set well, is the right one."

Turning heads

Although channel headlines have been grabbed by massive M&A activity in the last 12 months - the Dell EMC union, HP splitting, Tech Data snapping up Avnet Technology Solutions and Ingram's sale to HNA to name a few - Cisco has also been splashing the cash, but on a comparatively smaller scale. Jasper, OpenDNS and ParStream are just some of the firms it has snapped up.

Cisco's M&A activity has caught the attention of partners, according to Softcat's Cisco business manager Kevin Rama.

"In the background Cisco has made 14 acquisitions in the past 12 months; sizeable ones," he said. "It's been so seamless that it's been done very quietly - there has been no big [drama] with companies clashing. When they do those acquisitions they do them so well."

And while resellers that work with a number of vendors may be more easily distracted by megadeals, Alastair Rudman, chief client officer at Cisco-focused partner Natilik said from his perspective, the vendor has actually been more bullish than usual.

"From a partnership perspective, it's amazing," he said. "Everything comes through the channel - it's a given. Everything that's done - rebates, incentives, all those things - it's geared towards us in the channel. If anything, they are shouting a lot louder about those things."