Cisco asks partners to become specialists

Networking giant's European channel boss tells VARs to focus on their strengths

Thierry Drilhon: The more partners invest in what makes them unique, the more they will profit

Cisco is asking its European partners to invest in becoming highly focused specialists as it looks to enable better partner collaboration.

The vendor is currently migrating all its specialisations from a technological to an architectural focus. Requirements for obtaining the various partner levels will be adjusted accordingly.

Thierry Drilhon, Cisco’s vice president of worldwide channels for European markets, claimed he wants partners to focus more keenly on their strengths.

“There was a time when a reseller used to be able to address most of their customers’ needs, now it is a totally different story,” he said.

“We want our partners to generate profit around our solutions. The more they are going to be specialised and invest in what is making them unique, the more they are going to be profiting.”

Drilhon claimed the specialistion revamp is not an exercise in raising the barrier of entry to the partner programme. A specialisation in video architectures will be one of the early additions to the programme, he said.

“Video is a great opportunity,” he added. “To capture these opportunities we need to make sure that our partners are going to have the right skills and the right profile.”

Yves Mertens, Cisco’s European director of systems engineering and sales, said the vendor will work with partners to ensure engineering staff are not prohibitively focused on individual technologies.

“It is about integrated technologies and solutions; they need to have a broad scope.”

Drilhon added that Cisco wants to encourage much higher levels of partner-to-partner collaboration over the coming months.

“Is it happening? Yes. Is it happening enough? No. Our role is to facilitate [collaboration],” he said. “The partner landscape is really evolving.”

Jon Pickering, managing director of Gold partner Block Solutions, added that the move to architectural specialisations makes sense. But he added that he wanted clarity on what it will mean for partners already possessing a variety of badges.

“We have made a significant investment in Cisco specialisations and want to know how they are going to manage the transition for qualified partners like ourselves and what further investment is involved,” he said. “I do not want Cisco to be lowering the bar.”

Scott Fletcher, chief executive of Gold partner ANS Group, claimed the architectural specialisations are “a natural progression”.

“It is something we have been campaigning for in our areas of strength, such as datacentre, networking and unified communications,” he added.