Intrinsic claims loss of Cisco Gold status only temporary

Merseyside-based VAR working to rejoin Cisco's top partner tier following "administrative oversight"

Intrinsic Technology is working on resolving an "administrative oversight" that has seen it demoted - at least temporarily - from Cisco's top tier of partners.

As confirmed by Cisco's official partner locator, Intrinsic has been relegated from Cisco Gold to Silver partner status after failing to comply with the exacting requirements attached to the badge.

Cisco Gold status remains one of the channel's most rigorous and highly prized badges, with members of the exclusive club required to employ at least four Cisco CCIE engineers and hold a string of architectural specialisations with the vendor.

Talking to CRN, chief executive Darron Antill branded the demotion a "non-issue" and said the VAR is working with Cisco to ensure it ticks all the correct boxes.

"It was an administrative oversight on our end, not theirs, and hopefully we will get it fixed in the next few weeks," he said.

"When you are working in partnerland you have to be an expert and keep up with all the various partner programmes and intranets. We have the resources but we just need to ensure we have the certifications and that we tell Cisco."

Antill said the issues were connected to the fact Intrinsic closed the books on its fiscal 2013 last month and claimed it had been a solid year for the VAR as it continues to build its services business.

"In the past 12 months we continued to grow our managed services business and our customer services ratings have gone through the roof, which is really what we want to be known for," Antill said.

According to Cisco's partner locator, the networking giant has just 38 UK Gold partners and 15 Silver partners.

"Cisco remains a great partner and we continue to invest in a broad range of skills with them," said Antill (pictured), who joined Intrinsic in September.