“There’s never been a better time to be in IT.”
This is what Jacqui Guichelaar, Cisco’s Chief Information Officer, said during a CIO panel session at Cisco Live Digital back in June. The underlying theme of the conference was business continuity and resiliency during these ever-challenging times.
Digital transformation initiatives, whether longstanding or in their infancy, have received a roadmap jolt across Cisco’s customer base. In addition to this, infrastructures have grown in complexity, customization has become critical, and speedy delivery time has become a success metric.
Programmability and automation are pillars to these growing requirements. This has created a business demand for a new type of partner to join into the Cisco ecosystem: an independent software programmability company, also known as an Independent Software Vendor (ISV).
The opportunity
Many Cisco customers need consultancy and support with these expedited digital shifts. The Cisco portfolio has continued to expand, with APIs and programmability now a forethought in product development. We recognize the difference in skillset and expertise this entails for our customer delivery mechanisms.
This expertise evolution is at the heart of the DevNet Specialization partner program. Cisco also understands that there are entities that have this programmability skillset without a previous relationship with Cisco. This program allows for ISVs with programmability expertise to join into partnership with Cisco, to benefit our channel partners and ultimately, our customers.
Access to Cisco’s customer base and line of business
Joining the DevNet Specialization partner program would immediately make your ISV company accessible and discoverable to Cisco’s global customer base to provide software and application development and automation expertise.
While Cisco is a market leader in IT infrastructure, customer conversations are increasingly shifting from strictly IT, to integrating new line of business (LoB) stakeholders. These LoB stakeholders have critical requirements that are important to digital transformation strategies. This presents even more opportunities for ISVs’ skills to meet customers’ ever evolving needs.
Join a multi-partner ecosystem
In addition to the discoverability with Cisco’s customer base, you become discoverable to Cisco’s existing channel. Cisco’s business scales through a best-in-class ecosystem of channel partners. These channel partners have strong existing customer relationships and deep domain expertise on Cisco’s portfolio.
As these channel partners are working on shifting their expertise to programmability, they want to be able to pull in experts where necessary to deliver the best solutions possible for customers. With an established business practice and formidable knowledge in the software development space, the doors would open for a multi-partner ecosystem for customer engagements. This creates a massive opportunity, an engagement arrangement that I’m coining The Engagement Trifecta!
Next Steps
To reiterate, there’s never been a better time to be in IT or to get into business with Cisco. The demand for software development and automation expertise is bigger than ever and Cisco has a program now to welcome that skillset into the fold, presenting the opportunity to not only reach a larger customer base with demand, but join a thriving partner ecosystem.
I recommend checking-out what Susie Wee, SVP and GM of DevNet, has to say about the DevNetSpecialization program and opportunity. And I encourage you to check-out all the details you need to know on requirements to join this program.
To learn more about upcoming partner-related offerings, we also encourage you to register for our upcoming CX Partner Let’s Go Executive Exchange on August 18th from (7-8 am PST). Cisco CX executives (Denny Trevett, Chris Rittler, Rama Kolappan) will dive deeper into Cisco’s CX portfolio and how it is designed to create more opportunities for you to sell and deliver your own profitable lifecycle services. We’ll accelerate our alignment andgo-to-market success and profitability, together.
Wow, really well explained. Will be sharing this!