Cisco signals fresh partner programme

Cisco used its Partner Summit as the backdrop to announce the launch of a fresh channel programme designed to meet the needs of an increasingly artificial intelligence (AI-)dominated world.

The Cisco 360 offering puts an emphasis on getting partners in a position where they can deal with the complexity customers are facing as AI starts to affect infrastructure and workloads.

The vendor is giving partners a decent amount of time to transition over to the programme, with it coming into effect in February 2026.

The 360 programme includes a framework that defines partner value, focusing on how skills, services models and business investments support and expand customers. It also includes a couple of designations – Cisco Partner and Cisco Preferred Partner – which can be applied to areas such as security and networking to distinguish levels of investment.

On the specialisation front, the firm unveiled its AI-Ready Infrastructure Solution offering and the plan is to use specialisations as a route to arm partners with traditional architecture skills with more solution-based options.

Cisco is putting $80m into supporting channel skills so it can get more partners in a position where they can support customers with AI.

Oliver Tuszik,  EMEA president at Cisco, said that the vendor had a track record of evolving and enhancing its partner programme while keeping to the key tenets of making it predictable, reliable  and profitable for its channel base.

“We never stopped with one programme. We added as the business was evolving, as customers demand and our portfolio was changing, we added other programmes, like the Cisco services programmes, and especially the focus on what we call the life cycle,” he said.

“We added a lot of focus over the last few years on software and recurring revenues, so we continue to move the dollars that we pay to our partners away from a classical land motion,” he added.

Tuszik said that the reason the vendor is looking to roll out a fresh offering is due to changes in the market: “There’s a time where you see the complexity is increasing, and as complexity is the number one problem for everybody – no matter if you’re a customer, partner or Cisco itself – we took a closer look at how to simplify it and align it better with the business models that our partners have, but also the value they create with our end customers.”

He added that Cisco did not want to surprise its channel with a quick dash to a fresh programme and had been trialing the development of Cisco 360 for a while.

“We’re going to announce the model – but not like some of our competitors prefer to do and activate it the same day. No, we then go in a phase of continuously harmonising, optimising and testing it with our partners, because we want to ensure it fits their needs,” he said.

“It is also that there’s a chance to make changes, because many of our partners moved already to a life cycle software, outcome focus. Some of them might have not because the other business was very profitable, but we want to take them all with us so we give everybody the chance to make the changes.

“We will ensure that there’s enough time and support in the migration process so that we ease the transition, but also that we protect their investments,” he added.