Key takeaways from Cisco Partner Summit
via NetworkWorld | Cisco's annual reseller conclave, Partner Summit, is arguably its second-most-important event, behind only its customer-centric Cisco Live show.
In fiscal year 2025, $55 billion of Cisco's bookings went through its channel, which equates to about 90% of its revenue. And there have been some big – make that seismic – changes at Cisco in recent years, including its acquisition of Splunk and pivot to becoming a platform company. Also, earlier this year, the company named Tim Coogan as senior vice president of global partner sales.
Given all these changes and the importance of the channel, the 2025 edition of Partner Summit, held in San Diego earlier this month, was an important one. Overall, I thought it was a solid event with Cisco showing good momentum in many areas. Here are some of my key takeaways from the event.
Cisco affirms commitment to the channel
I'm not sure why, but for years many industry watchers have questioned Cisco's commitment to its partner community. I've heard rumors that Cisco wants a larger share of the services business, and an analyst once told me the company was building a secret services organization and would eventually cut most of its partners out of the loop. Nothing could be further from the truth.
One example of its commitment is related to the upcoming Cisco 360 Partner Program. Cisco announced it at the 2024 Partner Summit, and it's slated to go live in the spring of 2026. The reason for the long lead time is so Cisco can co-design it with the partners.
Reaction to the initial release of the program was tepid, to say the least, but over the past year, Cisco has taken feedback from thousands of partners and tweaked the program. The new program is centered on cross-architecture, outcome selling, and keys to partner success in the AI era. It includes two new specializations: secure AI infrastructure and secure networking.
The reality is, the more successful its more-than-half-a-million partners are, the more successful Cisco will be.
Platform approach is coming together
When Jeetu Patel took the reigns as chief product officer, one of his goals was to make the Cisco portfolio a "force multiple."