Cisco hails 'unequivocal' commitment to its distributors

Ken Trombetta, Cisco's vice president of global channels, says the vendor's financing options do not impinge on its disties

Cisco has hailed its "unequivocal" dedication to its distributors and said its own financing services are not stepping on the toes of its disties.

During the event, Cisco launched Easy Pay, a leasing tool for partners for its newly unveiled Digital Network Architecture (DNA) software network platform. Cisco already runs Cisco Capital, a financing option for partners on most Cisco products.

Ken Trombetta, Cisco's vice president of global channels, said that these financing services do not impinge on the role of the distributors and they can actually benefit disties.

"We are unequivocally committed to our distribution network around the world," he said. "They give us great scale and they give us great capability. We have thousands of global partners and our distributors touch so many of them directly and deliver sales and technical enablement.

"If anything, Cisco Capital is another tool distributors can use at their disposal to help accelerate customer opportunity and help elevate the value they can provide to our two-tier partners. As we look at these plans and develop a lot of this opportunity, we have a very similar set of incentives in place for our disties as well."

Cisco's senior vice president for the channel Wendy Bahr said Cisco's distributors play a pivotal role in helping its SMB-focused partners.

"Our distributors are world class, and around the globe they are really the engine and the enablement behind much of what we are doing with those [SMB] partners," she said. "Now they help all partner types - don't get me wrong - but they are the best at onboarding smaller partners who want to do business with Cisco; get them trained, educated and help them understand our architecture and technology.

"The distributors have a tremendous amount of value and do a lot of training and enablement," she said. "So for any smaller partner out there, who wants to be a Cisco partner, I would say let's connect you with one of our world-class distributors around the world because they are fantastic and they have been driving a lot of growth for us."