Incentives from Cisco Will Encourage Partners to Embrace Cloud

Solution providers are keen to begin selling cloud services, and this has now become a top priority. However, this move requires training and upfront investments, and can sometimes also involve a total alteration of the solution provider’s existing sales model. 

Network giant Cisco wants to assist in addressing this issue. The company announced, at its annual Cisco Partner Summit event in Boston, Massachusetts, that it will be improving its Cloud Partner Program and will be giving more resources and incentive opportunities to solution providers who are presently considering rolling out a cloud services practice.

In particular, the company provides new incentive offers via its Cloud Services Reseller partner designation, which is one of three included in Cisco's formal Cloud Partner Program. Solution providers who resell Cisco Powered Services on behalf of Cisco Cloud Providers will be targeted with the company’s Cloud Services Reseller designation.

In comparison to Cloud Builders and Cloud Providers, which are the other two partner types in the program, Cloud Services Resellers seeks to assist partners that do not have the necessary bandwidth needed to develop its own cloud practices, or move its business towards recurring revenue models which are a trait of selling cloud services.

In order to make it easier to embrace the cloud, Cisco is leveraging its Cloud Services Reseller program, and has added further benefits and rewards programs. According to Cisco, the first benefit is receiving the company’s Value Incentive Program (VIP) rebates on sales of Cisco-Powered Services. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), hosted collaboration, and TelePresence-as-a-Service (TPaaS) are featured in the Cisco Powered Services and these are available from Cisco partners at a variety of monthly subscription prices.

New York-based eTribeca LLC is a Cisco Premier partner, and its chief technology officer and chief operating officer, Gary Berzack, noted that the latest VIP rebate for Cloud Services Resellers will demand greater investment from Cisco, particularly in relation to how its partners “market and position these new Cisco Cloud Powered Services in parallel to what [they] are already doing.”

Berzack said that the challenges of positioning the new Cloud Powered Services “is no small feat.” He added: “My question is what is the offer and price of these new Cisco Cloud powered services that will qualify for VIP, and what is the exact VIP rebate?”

The addition of Cisco VIP rebate incentives for cloud solutions across the full suite of Cisco products is what Berzack would most like to see. Companies such as eTribeca are able to use these to develop a full cloud solution in the coming years. This sort of situation would mean that over a three-year cloud offering, a $250,000 wireless solution could be stretched out to $400,000, and could provide a number of cloud services and lifecycle management, according to Berzack.

The rewards point system from Cisco is based on the number that Cloud Services Resellers sell; points are awarded to resellers as they sell, and they are then able to spend those points on specific products of learning credits from Cisco. The learning credits can be used for training initiatives. 

Furthermore, Cisco Powered Branding will be accessible and available to Cloud Services Resellers, and they can also be used on their own white-label offers. Cisco will facilitate the flow of the Cisco Powered brand to the Cisco Cloud Provider and then onto the Cloud Services Reseller.

When a Cisco Powered Services sale is made through a Cloud Services Reseller, the Cloud Provider and the company’s internal sales force will be compensated to avoid channel conflict.

A Cisco Cloud Services Reseller must already be a Cisco registered partner, show a valid contract with a Cisco Cloud Provider, have a dedicated cloud customer relationship manager in-house, and apply for the partner designation online, in order to access the new incentives. At present, over 600 Cloud Services Reseller applications in process have been sold by the company.

Similar to its incentives, Cisco is leveraging and enhancing its training resources for Cloud Services Resellers so that they can put their cloud services practice into motion.

The Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) Resource Center is a new Web-based and self-service portal which Cisco Cloud Services Resellers have access to, and they are able to use Cisco's go-to-markets tools through this.

A virtual match-making tool for Cloud Providers and Cloud Services Resellers is one of the tools that comes as part of the company’s Cloud Connections service. Resellers can use the tool to view a list of Cisco Cloud Providers that are available, compare them to various resale options, and attempt to contact others that seem suitable.

The Cisco Business Transformation Playbook was also release by the company, and this is a set of training materials that seeks to support solution providers in migrating from a pure reseller model to a cloud and managed services model. Six different topics are covered by the Playbook, and these include an overview of the cloud market and the opportunities there; how the sales of cloud services changes a reseller's business model; how a reseller's sales model is affected by the sales of cloud services; tips for marketing cloud services; how to create a cloud services portfolio; and a list of Cisco resources for transitioning to the cloud.

Finally, a Business Transformation Workshop will be included alongside the Business Transformation Playbook; the former can be attended in-person or by webinar, and enables users to understand the best practices for these business model transformations. They can also access a Partner Business Transformation Video-on-Demand series.

The company’s efforts to provide cloud opportunities and encourage partners to transition towards the cloud come as cloud adoption is expected to increase. Gartner states that by 2015, half of all CIOs expect to run most of their applications and infrastructures in the cloud. By 2016, global spending on public cloud services is set to reach $200 billion.

Seventeen-hundred cloud-related specializations have already been made available by Cisco, and this is across the whole of the company’s partner community. Over 100 Cisco Powered cloud offers are provided via partners and are accessible on the market. (CY) Link