Internet of Things 'limitless' for our partners, says Cisco

Partner boss Richard Roberts claims UK channel business growing at double digits

The Internet of Things represents a "limitless" opportunity for the channel, Cisco's UK partner boss has asserted as he revealed that the vendor's channel business here is growing at double digits.

The IoT – or the Internet of Everything as Cisco chief executive John Chambers refers to it – is tipped for explosive growth, with Gartner predicting 26 billion things other than PCs or smartphones will be connected to the internet by 2020, up from 0.9 billion four years ago.

Talking to CRN, Richard Roberts, managing director of Cisco's UK partner and commercial sales organisation (pictured), said the term is already more than just a distant dream for many of the networking giant's partners.

He gave the example of how partners have used the IoT to help the emergency services by ensuring ambulances are in the best place to respond to calls based on trend mapping and to improve the intelligence of the oil exploration industry.

"The IoT is really with us in all shapes and flavours and many of our partners already play a role in just the networking part or, more significantly, the vertical applications, and that will just accelerate," Roberts said.

"It will take time in some of the traditional markets such as the automotive industry and airlines because their sales cycles are much longer – but it will get there. When you get to a point where everything you could possibly need to communicate with or connect to is available to you, there is limitless opportunity there."

Partner power

Roberts claimed that Cisco's partner-led business, which covers SMB and midmarket accounts, has grown double digits in the UK for the last two quarters, with public sector markets such as healthcare, local government and education providing some of the highlights.

Cisco is switching more and more of its larger customers from a direct high-touch to a partner-led model, Roberts added. Currently, just 180 enterprise customers have a high-touch Cisco account manager, down from 500 a few years ago.

"The partner walks every day in the shoes of the customer so it is important for us to work with them and share their differentiation so they can have a sustainable business model," Roberts said.

"That's driving innovation in a way that wasn't possible in the past."

Cisco last week pinpointed the Internet of Everything as a long-term opportunity for the firm despite trimming its overall growth forecasts.

Chambers himself said it represents a $14.4trn opportunity over the next decade, while Cisco's research predicts that 49 per cent of all internet traffic will originate from non-PC devices by 2017, up from 26 per cent last year.

But CRN's latest poll suggests it is a concept most people in the industry aren't familiar with.

Where next?

Roberts said consistency will be the watchword for Cisco's channel strategy in 2014, although hinted the vendor would bolster support for partners embracing cloud consumption models to ensure "compensation neutrality" between offering on and off-premise solutions.

"We will continue to look at the way the market is evolving around these new consumption models and continue to refine our value and profitability proposition to partners operating in that market," he said.

Gary Dobson, sales director at Cisco partner Dynamic Technologies Europe (DTE), said his firm will put "more eggs into the Cisco basket" in 2014.

"We've had issues with Cisco in the past but they've been ironed out," he said. "It seems the traditional hierarchy where they support the bigger partners doesn't exist any more. We speak to businesses running Cisco and the reliability of the product is excellent and the ROI is always good, despite the initial outlay being higher. And, if anything, you can make more margin off Cisco now if you play all their programmes right."

However, Dobson urged Cisco to crack down on grey and counterfeit product, citing the fact DTE is still often significantly undercut on midmarket deals by unauthorised partners. "The kit has to be grey or counterfeit," he said.

Echoing the sentiments of Cisco's brand protection team, Roberts responded: "We do have partners in that situation call us and say ‘this doesn't look right - we're doing everything we can possibly do and yet our price doesn't meet the customer expectations because of this third party'. And in this situation we would investigate and use all the tools available to us.

"If we have sufficient proof at that point we will go the customer and let them know there may be a risk in them procuring. If we cannot guarantee the integrity and route to market of that product it is our obligation to let the customer know the risks associated with that so we support the partners that are doing the right thing."