Cisco opens up $125bn market for partners

Top execs lift lid on ins and outs of channel revamp as partners claim UCS space has been democratised

Cisco's overhaul of its accreditation programme will offer partners access to more than $125bn of market opportunities, the vendor's leading channel execs have claimed.

Partners have also welcomed the shake-up, claiming it will open the floodgates for resellers to sign up to sell its datacentre wares.

From August 2012, partners looking to attain or renew Cisco Gold partner status will require all three of the vendor's new Advanced Architecture specialisations: Collaboration, Borderless Networks and Datacentre. Silver partners will require one, alongside one of the vendor's badges under the existing Advanced Technology Programme (ATP).

Yves Mertens, director of sales, systems engineering, Cisco Europe, told ChannelWeb that the global total addressable market (TAM) around borderless networks products and services is $49bn (£30bn) annually. The figure for collaboration is $35bn, he added, while datacentre VARs will have a $42bn TAM.

"[The accreditation revamp] helps Cisco and our partners compete against commodity-based competitors," said Mertens. "This presents a massive opportunity. The new architecture specialisations present a clear link between the Cisco solutions and customer business needs and include the opportunity for partners to deploy professional services."

Mertens (pictured right) estimated that current Gold partners will need somewhere between 12 and 150 hours of extra training to retain their badge. He stressed that the process would not be onerous or financially draining.

Resellers already holding an Advanced UC badge under ATP would only need to undertake 14 hours of free online training to get the Collaboration Architecture thumbs-up, he explained. Those in possession of a Datacentre Storage Networking qualification will need to put in 96 man-hours, at a cost of $7,000, to win the Datacentre Architecture stamp.

"The whole transition will be a smooth one," said Mertens. "Cisco has always been very diligent to do things in a way that is absorbable for our partners. We will encourage them to start early to ensure a smooth certification process."

Changing trains
As part of the channel programme shake-up, Cisco is also changing how it accredits learning providers, which were previously split into Gold, Silver and Premier levels. Training houses will now be branded as Associate or Advanced.

The former will focus on core technology training for end-user career certifications, such as the CCNA and CCIE. Advanced learning providers will be tasked with tooling up partners with the skills needed to attain the new specialisations.

Andres Sintes (pictured below), director of sales for Cisco's World Wide Learning Partner Organisation, revealed that the vendor has already been working to accredit a number of Advanced training firms.

"About 50 are ready to skill the partners up immediately," he explained. "They are some of the largest learning partners that we have around the world."

All other Cisco learning providers have until the end of this year to qualify as either an Associate or Advanced partner. Top-level providers will initially comprise 10 per cent of all Cisco learning partners, predicted Sintes, but this will soon rise to 25 per cent. Smaller providers may also find it easier to ascend, he claimed.

"Instead of asking them to have X number of CCIEs on staff, we are asking them to have X number of capabilities supported," explained Sintes.

Partner praise
Russell King, head of pre-sales at Gold partner ONI, welcomed the changes as being more representative of partner and customer needs. The overhaul will also swell the ranks of datacentre specialists.

"The changes they have made will broaden their approach for the UCS products," he added. "There are a lot of partners that cannot achieve the datacentre ATP because they do not have the necessary networking skills."

But King claimed that the revamp may also impact the top tier of the Cisco channel.

"The landscape may change, certainly initially," he explained. "The usual suspects will still be there, but some partners will struggle and may drop out in certain areas.

Barry Body, UK Cisco business sales manager at distributor Magirus, was another to endorse the shake-up.

"This gives a very nice balance between allowing partners to enter the market - especially around the UCS platform - while protecting those ATP [partners] that have invested heavily," he said.

Magirus was brought into the Cisco distribution fold last year to recruit and serve UCS resellers.

"[The revamp] helps with the development of those partners," Body added. "It has been, shall we say, challenging to get them to invest [up until now]. The growth potential in UCS is phenomenal."