Today marks the beginning of the Cisco Partner Summit. It’s an important annual event where we bring our Cisco Partners together (virtually this year) from around the world to talk about the state of the industry, new offerings, programs, and how we can continue to meet our customers’ most critical needs.
I want to say thank you to all our partners, and particularly our DevNet Specialized partners for the work that they’re doing to build their automation and software practices. I really enjoy working with our partners, and I’m excited today, to share more about how DevNet can be their catalyst for innovation and growth.
Over the past few years, we’ve used the concept of Walk-Run-Fly to talk about the community’s journey with code, to pick up software skills using APIs, automation, and programmability. It’s how we refer to specific projects in the DevNet Automation Exchange. It’s even how we’ve talked about our own journey as DevNet – how we’ve grown the community, as well as the tools and resources to help you all succeed. At Partner Summit this year, I’ll be sharing how it also applies to our partners, in how they’re developing their businesses and the journey they’ve been on with us.
The Walk-Run-Fly journey with DevNet
Let’s take a look at the Walk-Run-Fly journey for partners.
- When I say Walk, I mean how partners can continue to empower their teams with new skills leveraging DevNet certifications.
- When I say Run, I mean how partners can differentiate their businesses with the new DevNet Specialization.
- And then there’s Fly, how our partners can fly by selling solutions in the DevNet Marketplace. Check out this short video about the Marketplace.
Helping partners succeed and scale
Many of our partners are already well into their Walk-Run-Fly journey with DevNet. Since we made the biggest change in 25 years to the Cisco certification program back in February 2020, our partners are now training their teams for new job roles, like the Network Automation Developer and DevSecOps Engineer. Now it’s about how we continue to move forward together and help our partners succeed and scale.
When I look at our partners, I see the DevNet community. Why? Because over 50,000 DevNet community members are from our partners. Over 1,000 DevNet certifications have been earned by partner talent, and 400 Cisco partners have DevNet-certified talent on staff. That’s pretty tremendous! Each year at DevNet Create, our annual developer conference, we announce our DevNet Creator awards to recognize the most innovative and inspiring community members leveraging automation, programmability, software, and APIs. Over the past few years, a majority of Creator Award winners have come from our partners.
Our partners are not just “walking” – by encouraging their teams to get DevNet certified and join the DevNet Class of 2020 – many are “running” to achieve the DevNet Specialization. Ever since we officially launched the DevNet Specialization program in May 2020, we’ve had several partners become DevNet Specialized. One of our partners, World Wide Technology, is the first to achieve DevNet Advanced status.
We created this DevNet Specialization to recognize and differentiate our partners who are building and investing in their automation and software practices so that they can help our customers in stronger ways. And we’re excited that our partners can now count the DevNet Advanced level towards their Gold Certification. We’re so thankful for, and impressed by, the work that our DevNet Specialized and Advanced partners are doing. And so many more of our partners are on their way to becoming DevNet Specialized too – 100s are on this journey with DevNet.
The DevNet Marketplace allows you to fly
That brings us to how your business can “fly” with DevNet and the DevNet Marketplace. Cisco and many of our partners provide critical infrastructure for our customers, but we know that there’s a tremendous opportunity to help our customers in even bigger ways. We can help them solve their business problems and we can help them help their customers. We can do this by providing a new type of solution.
The solutions our customers use are composed of Cisco infrastructure and products – software and applications that our partners are building on top of infrastructure and more using infrastructure APIs. Because these applications and software solutions can be complex, we offer services to ensure successful implementation and adoption.
Think of the medical industry as an example. When the global pandemic hit, many healthcare providers were searching for a comprehensive and integrated telehealth solution to improve patient care. That’s the type of solution that the DevNet Marketplace will provide, where Cisco collaboration and networking products, partner applications and services all come together to solve a customer’s business problem. And that’s just one example.
With the DevNet Marketplace, our partners can continue building and differentiating their businesses – whether it be in healthcare, education, government, or infrastructure automation.
Here’s a quote that says it best:
“One of the unique things about DevNet is that it allows you, as
a partner, to create your own intellectual property. It belongs to you,
and it creates huge, differentiated value for you and your organization.”
That’s from Cisco Chairman and CEO, Chuck Robbins, who really understands the value that our partners bring. He knows how important they are to our ecosystem. The DevNet Marketplace brings together the best of Cisco, the best of DevNet and most importantly, the best of our partners.
Innovate and grow with DevNet
No matter where our partners are on their journeys with DevNet – “walking” by empowering teams with DevNet certifications, “running” by differentiating their businesses with the DevNet Specialization, or “flying” by selling solutions in the DevNet Marketplace – we invite and encourage our partners to leverage DevNet as a catalyst.
To learn more and register interest, please visit developer.cisco.com/partner, or watch my session at Partner Summit, “DevNet: Your catalyst for innovation and growth.”
I’d like to once again, thank our partners for everything they do. Our partners are so important, and we are so excited to continue on this journey together.
Check out the following blogs to learn more about what’s happening at Partner Summit:
- “Are you Future Ready?” by Julia Chen, VP, Global Partner Transformation
- “Reimagining Customer Experience: Seizing Our Opportunity Together, Today” by Thimaya Subhaiya, SVP, CX Solutions & Acceleration
We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a question or leave a comment below.
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