NEWS RELEASE: Cisco Helps Channel Partners Evolve With Cloud Partner Program and Collaborative Professional Services
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Cisco Helps Channel Partners Evolve With Cloud Partner Program and
Collaborative Professional Services
NEW ORLEANS - Cisco Partner Summit – March 1, 2011 – Cisco today
announced it is investing in new channel initiatives to help partners
evolve to monetize the cloud opportunity and expand their professional
services practices. Today at its annual global partner conference, Cisco
introduced a new cloud partner program to help partners choose their
role in the cloud and evolve their business models to capitalize on the
multi-billion cloud market opportunity. To help partners enhance their
professional services capabilities and accelerate their evolution to
selling end-to-end communications and IT solutions or 'architectures,'
Cisco also unveiled its latest smart services innovation, Cisco®
Collaborative Professional Services.
HIGHLIGHTS:
Cloud Partner Program
* The Cisco Cloud Partner Program (CPP) has three tracks that provide
partners with the flexibility to choose the role they want to play in
the market: Cloud Builder, Cloud Provider and Cloud Services Reseller.
- Cloud Builder is for partners who design and implement cloud-ready
infrastructures or fully provisioned private or public clouds. The
designation validates partners' competency in three aspects of building
clouds: Infrastructure, Management Applications and Cloud Professional
Services.
- Cloud Provider is designed for partners offering public cloud
services to the market. The Cloud Provider track empowers and supports
our cloud service provider partners to sell their own brand of
Cisco-powered cloud services.
- Cloud Services Reseller is complementary to the Cloud Provider track
as it offers an additional route to market for the cloud provider.
Cloud Services Resellers are partners who "white-label" or resell a
Cloud Provider's "Cisco Powered Service."
* The Cloud Builder and Cloud Provider tracks include branding, as well
as reference architecture support, financing, market development funding
and access to channel partners as a route to market. These benefits are
in addition to those the partners already receive from Cisco.
* To reduce incremental costs to partners, CPP builds upon partners'
existing certifications in Cisco and its ecosystem partners.
Collaborative Professional Services
* Collaborative Professional Services (CPS) is a portfolio of services
that combines Cisco intellectual capital, engineering expertise and
service automation to help partners profitably expand or build new
professional services practices.
* CPS delivers several types of services to Cisco partners:
- Assessment Services: Software tools help partners analyze and collect
data through assessments and automate service capabilities.
- Guidance and Development Services: Cisco engineering resources review
or create technology design and implementation plans to enable
partners.
- Practice Accelerators: Cisco Services best practices around new
technologies or architectures are shared to help partners design or
expand a professional service practice.
* With 30 business services in the portfolio, CPS spans all major
technologies in Cisco borderless networks, collaboration and data
center/virtualization architectures and will expand to offer cloud
services later this year.
* CPS helps qualified Cisco partners expand into new technology markets
faster and increase the operational efficiency of their services
practices by using Cisco engineering resources, intellectual property,
proven methodologies and service automation.
* Cisco routinely captures knowledge through millions of customer
interactions and applies that expertise to deliver smart service
capabilities. These smart services enable partners to deliver proactive,
automated services and profitably grow their service practices.
* As Cisco's latest smart service innovation, CPS helps Cisco partners
increase customer satisfaction
by providing proactive guidance as well
as actionable customer recommendations based on real-time network
intelligence to their customers.
Supporting Quotes:
* Edison Peres, senior vice president, Worldwide Channels, Cisco:
"The network platform is essential to the delivery of cloud
applications and services, creating a rich opportunity for Cisco channel
partners. The Cisco Cloud Partner Program will further empower our
channel partners to evolve their business model to monetize the cloud
opportunity."
* Karl Meulema, senior vice president, Cisco Services:
"Services are the key differentiator and profitability engine for our
partners. As our latest smart service innovation, Collaborative
Professional Services will help our channel partners grow their
professional service capabilities and accelerate the transition to
architectures."
* Adrian Foxall, networking business line director, Computacenter, a
UK-based Cisco Gold Certified Partner:
"As channel resellers look to seize the cloud computing market
opportunity, Cisco's Cloud Partner Program provides a solid blueprint
for helping migrate toward new cloud business models. The program is
inclusive, offering different roles resellers can engage, while
recognizing resellers' existing multi-vendor technology investments and
capabilities. The Program gives channel resellers multiple opportunities
to capture the growth in the cloud computing market with the deep
enablement and programmatic support from Cisco."
* Jorge Rodriguez Saenz, corporate business director of operations, ITS
InfoCom, a Cisco Gold-certified and Master MSCP partner headquartered in
Costa Rica:
"We see great opportunity in emerging countries such as Costa Rica for
collaboration solutions. Partnering with Cisco provides an edge in these
markets to be successful. Collaborative Professional Services allows us
to build our service capabilities around these technologies and position
them in new ways to meet customer demand. At the same time, CPS is
helping improve our own team's operation and business efficiencies."
Availability:
* Cisco Collaborative Services is scheduled to be globally available in
Q3 FY11 to technology specialized partners.
* Cisco plans to launch the Cisco Cloud Partner Program in Q4 FY11.
Video
* Ralph Nimergood, vice president, Worldwide Partner Organization,
Cisco, comments on the role partners will play as the industry
transitions to cloud:
* Bob Dimicco, senior director, Cisco Services, highlights Cisco's
Collaborative Professional Services:
Supporting Resources:
* On Twitter, follow @Cisco_Channels:
http://twitter.com/Cisco_Channels and the #ciscops11 hash tag.
http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=+%23ciscops11.
* Visit the Cisco Channels Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/CiscoChannels for Partner Summit
conversations, videos and pictures.
* Visit the Channels blog: http://blogs.cisco.com/channels to get
Partner Summit event news, interviews, and daily recaps.
Technorati Tags:
Cisco, channel partner, channel program, cloud partner program,
professional services, collaborative services, smart services
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Contact Information
Andrea Berry
StrategicAmpersand Inc. (for Cisco)
416-961-5595, Ext. 428
andberry@cisco.com
Karin Scott
Cisco
416-306-7164
kariscot@cisco.com
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