Wednesday, June 3, 2009

A bigger sail for partners to navigate the "Perfect Storm"


Cisco has added to its "Navigate to Accelerate" partner enablement arsenal with a series of announcements this week in Boston; less than an hour's drive from Gloucester, MA (where the Andrea Gail and Billy Tyne's ill-fated crew departed for the final time in 1991, inspiring 2007's "Perfect Storm").

The "Perfect Storm" for managed services adoption is well underway (fueled by technology enabling "clouds", the worst economy in 25 years keeping business "underwater", and many providers trying to offer their customers a "lifeboat" with new service pricing models). At the eye of this storm is Data Center Virtualization and the business benefits it will bring (efficiency, scaling, reliability, and new service time to market).

Among the announcements Cisco has made this week are new channel programs to expand its expanding data center partner channel:

Key Take-aways:

* To motivate channel partners to invest in building a unified data center practice, Cisco has expanded its existing Value Incentive Program (VIP) offering for all of Cisco's data center technologies, including unified computing, storage networking, and WAN optimization, as well as for its existing offering for data center switching. VIP is Cisco's flagship profitability program that rewards partners for investing in architecture practices around collaboration, data center virtualization and borderless networks.
* Cisco also announced the new Data Center Channel Solutions Program, designed to help enable and accelerate the sale of tested, validated reference IT solution designs that incorporate products from industry-leading data center vendors, including EMC, Microsoft, NetApp, Red Hat, and VMware.
* Cisco today announced it is opening the Unified Computing opportunity to a broader range of its channel partner community. Cisco is announcing an Authorized Partner Program (APP) to support the new Unified Computing C-Series Rack-Mount Servers. All Cisco DCNI Specialized Partners will be able to sell the new rack-mount servers after completing online training and exam from Cisco.
* The Cisco Advanced Data Center Network Infrastructure Specialization (DCNI) is the fastest-ramping specialization in Cisco's history. Despite the economic downturn, partners have rapidly invested in the specialization since its launch a year ago because of its strategic significance to their business.

More good things to come...

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