Cisco bolstered its recently overhauled 360 Partner Program with past updates now in full circulation, new incentives, and of course, more AI, all moves that the vendor said show it remains open to working with go-to-market partners on refining the program.

The updates include a new “Ecosystem Deal Registration,” which is described as a “new way for advisors and developers to be formally recognized for contributions that lead to transactions.” Tim Coogan, SVP for global partner sales at Cisco, during a press briefing explained it as rewarding “non-transacting partners that are influential in a customer's decision and roadmap for how they deploy technology.”

“Our portfolio supports an ecosystem and a holistic approach to decision making, and we recognize that there can be partners with great influence that may not transact,” Coogan said. “Our traditional programs were based on transactions. This is a really unique way to pull the entire ecosystem of partners into one solution for the benefit of our customers.”

Cisco is also increasing annual contract value (ACV) growth rewards and adoption compensation, including new adopt incentives for its Cisco IQ platform, and providing an incremental 2% cross-sell bonus on top of existing cross-sell rebates for “preferred” and “portfolio” partners expanding customer accounts into net-new Cisco architectures, including Splunk. This move reinforces Cisco’s ongoing push toward platformization.

That Cisco IQ push is also backed by that platform now being officially available to partners. That AI-backed platform was initially unveiled late last year and is designed to provide real-time insights, on-demand assessments, troubleshooting, and personalized learning, automation, and agents from across Cisco's professional services and support offerings under one umbrella. The vendor claims more than 16,000 customers and more than 19 million devices have been onboarded to the service since April.

Cisco also updated support resources to “help partners differentiate and expand their offerings for customers.” This includes deal registration visibility in its Partner Experience Platform (PXP); trend analysis and eligibility tracking; an “on-demand agentic resource” content agent to help hasten sales access to Cisco approved content and services; a deal estimator; and a new security operation technology (OT) certification program.

“The idea here is, I think we've got the building blocks to enhance and maximize profitability,” Coogan said of the most recent program updates. “We have at times been a little more difficult to do business with because it is a sophisticated and complex portfolio that we built and simplifying that experience and how our partners work with us is a fundamental pillar.”

Keeping with the program flow

The latest updates comes nine months after Cisco officially launched its long-gestating 360 partner program. The previous iteration included a long running “Value Incentive Program” that had run for 23 years and enveloped 46 different phases, with its final phase described as the most lucrative.

Despite that seemingly positive descriptor, Coogan previously told SDxCentral that “nobody liked” the vendor’s legacy program when it launched and that it eventually went through dozens of iterations before hitting its term limit. The new 360 program built on those iterations with what Coogan said is Cisco’s belief that “you should reward and incent behaviors that are mutually beneficial.”

This involved changing the old program, which Coogan said “was volume centric,” to “clearly aligning investments to rewards in a way that embraces the portfolio.”

“Can we sell each piece of the Cisco portfolio independent of one another? Of course, we can. We are huge believers in open standards and open APIs, but we recognize that there is an intrinsic value when we sell across our portfolio with our partners,” Coogan explained.

Coogan noted earlier this year that Cisco has been “wildly pleased with the way the launch went,” but acknowledged it has also worked through necessary changes since that launch. One specific change was in reinstating compute deal registration following backlash from the partner community.

“Change is difficult,” Coogan said as part of the most recent updates. “We ask partners to invest in their capability to deliver this incredible portfolio, and we are as deeply committed to modifying it over time based on that exact same feedback.”