Cisco programme changes are allowing partners to 'focus on the areas that they want to specialise in' - UK channel boss

Angela Whitty tells partners that they must be 'really clear about what it is that you want to be famous for'

Cisco's partner organisation managing director for the UK and Ireland, Angela Whitty, claims that the ongoing changes to its programme are making it simpler for partners to focus on the areas that they are most specialised in.

The software giant has made a raft of changes to its partner offering over the past year, most recently updating its Partner Experience Portal (PXP) to include new functions such as additional insight and planning tools.

Last year, it was announced that Cisco was making its "biggest partner programme changes in a decade" by reorganising it into four categories - integrators, providers, developers and advisors - which was followed by the launch of PXP.

The changes were focused on providing greater simplicity for partners, Cisco said at the time, and speaking to CRN, Whitty said Cisco is concentrating its efforts on allowing partners to more easily target the specialised areas where they can achieve the most success.

"Having a partner certification programme that allows our partners to slip very nicely into the area that works for them, and to be the gold standard in that area, I think was really important and has been met with a lot of positive sentiment from our partner base here in the UK," she said.

"We were probably missing a trick in our two-tier space by working really closely with distribution around how we develop. We were probably missing a whole raft of our ecosystem of partners that transacted through our distribution partners, and our mission over the last six years has become really to support all of our partners and help them to find their place in the ecosystem.

"A lot of the certifications and the training that people had to follow was very one size fits all, it was probably designed for a very hardware centric business. But now with the programme being split into four tracks - provider, developer integrator and advisor - a partner can be very specific."

Cisco, like most vendors, is moving towards as-a-service offerings with the launch of Cisco Plus earlier this year, which offers its IT infrastructure products including networking, security, compute, storage and applications through an as-a-service model.

As part of this focus, Whitty said the company has been trialling an initiative in the UK over the past year called ‘partner as a customer' which "enables partners with platform plays that they can sell out to their customer base".

The vendor has also been trialling an expanded apprentice programme in co-operation with partners, Whitty added, which sees its partners take on apprentices and Cisco provide them with the key skills training they need, which is due to fully launch towards the end of the year.

These announcements come just after Cisco revealed its AppDynamics offering is to move to a 100 per cent channel model.

"Our customers are no longer really looking to buy hardware solutions and software and then package it together themselves. They're really looking at the business outcomes and the managed services that they can get vendors, from the ecosystem, that can meet the business outcomes that they're looking for," Whitty explained.

"We're trying to understand how we can embed, more effectively, our technology into our partners' solutions as well so that we can scale to reach more customers.

"Some customers will always want a one stop shop for all of their technology requirements. But we actually find now that customers will want a partner that is very boutique and very specific in a particular technology area."

And when asked for her advice on what partners should focus on over the next year, Whitty added: "I think the most important thing, the thing that I always say to every partner, is it's important for them to be to be very, very clear about what they want their unique selling points to be.

"The one thing I always say is be really clear about what it is that you want to be famous for and then let us help you to focus on that."