Cisco reinstated compute deal registration following backlash from the partner community.

According to CRN, Tim Coogan, SVP of global partner sales at Cisco, told partners they will “once again receive the benefits of being provided discount differential, and you can confidently lead with Cisco on your compute deals.” The U-turn comes after the networking giant eliminated deal registration for its Unified Compute System (UCS) lineup in response to rising memory prices.

That decision, made in February solely for the UCS line, saw long-time Cisco partners enraged that the company has reduced the opportunity for margins by as much as 8%. Sales representatives reportedly began considering shifting Cisco compute deals to alternative vendors in response to the decision, with partners telling CRN the vendor was losing market share to the likes of Lenovo, Dell Technologies, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

In his partner memo, Coogan said that the tech giant was “dedicated” to reinstating compute deal registration.

“We recognize it is a cornerstone of our partnership. You’ve been asking about this, and we’ve been focused on bringing it back,” Coogan reportedly noted in the memo.

A real 360 after 360

Cisco’s compute choices came at a precarious time to the vendor, having launched the long-awaited overhaul of its 360 go-to-market partner program in January. Partners were on-board after a wobbly start when Cisco 360 was announced last year. That reshuffle, angled toward the AI era, saw some "universal negativity" as the program was in its infancy, according to ZK Research Principal Analyst Zeus Kerravala, who added that partner reactions now were "180 degrees" from where the 360 program was a year ago.

"It's been a long road getting here but the majority of partners are happy with the change, which I would not have said a year ago," Kerravala told SDxCentral.

Cisco’s UCS move seemed to have blindsided the wider ecosystem, undermining Cisco 360’s promise to reward strategic partners focused on business outcomes.

The question now remains on what other solutions Cisco will take considering the AI memory crunch shows no signs of slowing. HPE CEO Antonio Neri recently told investors the vendor expects the current memory supply chain bottleneck will continue into 2027, highlighting that the IT market “is facing a sharp acceleration in supply tightness and increasing component costs,” specifically pointing to dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) and non-volatile (NAND) memory.