Dive Brief:
- Cisco is updating its Cisco 360 partner program with expanded recognition paths and incentives, the vendor said Monday at its annual partner summit in Vancouver. Advisors and developer partners will be credited for their work influencing deals and can access new partner value indexes built for them. A distributor value index will also be available in spring 2027, according to an announcement.
- Partners can now earn 50% more in rewards for annual contract value growth and double the incentive rate on adopt for all use cases, Cisco said. The vendor also added deal registration visibility to its partner experience platform, eligibility tracking for partner value indexes and incentive deal estimators.
- “The bottom line is it's not a set it and forget it mentality,” SVP of Global Partner Sales Tim Coogan, said during a press briefing last week. “Change is difficult. We ask partners to invest in their capability to deliver this incredible portfolio, and we are as deeply committed to modifying it over time based on that exact same feedback.”
Dive Insight:
Cisco introduced the Cisco 360 Partner Program in January, replacing its legacy partner frameworks with an outcome-based model built for AI adoption. The tech vendor made a point to introduce the new program gradually and deliberately, incorporating partner feedback before the launch.
For some partners, the lead-up to Cisco’s new program was frustrating. “They felt like Cisco already had the best channel program,” Neil Anderson, VP and CTO of cloud, infrastructure and AI solutions at WWT, told Channel Dive last week. “They were angering partners for a while. Tim Coogan came in and has kind of settled all that down.”
Cisco 360’s latest update comes after a year of acquisitions focused on AI and agentic observability. In May, the tech vendor acquired AI observability platform builder Galileo Technologies and, two months later, purchased AI agent threat protection company WideField Security.
Cisco is betting on security demand as AI complicates IT environments. The company rolled out Cisco IQ to general availability at the annual summit, giving partners visibility into customer IT estates for risk management and infrastructure planning. Clients can also now securely share installed-base data with resellers through the role-based access control tool.
“We want to make sure the customer feels that they are in control,” Vikas Butaney, SVP of customer experience product management at Cisco, said during the pre-briefing. “We believe Cisco IQ providing asset by asset, maybe domain by domain, visibility to our partners, and then allowing them to interplay to serve our customers best — that is our core strategy.”
Partners working with customers implementing AI must provide evolving security services. Cisco hopes to facilitate that transition.
“As our enterprise customers scale AI workloads and high-density wireless environments, the network must evolve from simple connectivity into an active, self-defending platform,” Dilip Kumar, president and global head of infrastructure solutions at IT services provider NTT Data, said in the press release
