Dive Brief:
- Cisco launched a cross-domain platform for engineers, AI agents and channel partners to manage IT infrastructure. The platform went into controlled availability Monday with a select cohort of customers and partners, according to the announcement.
- Customers and partners can use Cisco Cloud Control to build agents, code applications and resolve infrastructure issues with a workspace called Cisco AI Canvas. The platform consolidates telemetry from Cisco’s five main technology areas: networking, security, compute, observability, and collaboration.
- “Cisco Cloud Control is a command center for agentic AI: a platform where your team and your AI agents work together, in the same environment, with the same information, and with humans in control,” Cisco President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel said in the Monday announcement.
Dive Insight:
Cisco Cloud Control is the operational infrastructure behind the Cisco 360 program's biggest bet: that partners can unlock long-term value from the Cisco stack.
The vendor overhauled its channel program in January after an 18-month buildup spent preparing its partners to adapt to the Cisco Partner Value Index. Cisco is scoring resellers on how they help customers implement its technology and pull long-term value out of it.
“This is the motion Cisco 360 is built to recognize and reward,” VP of global partner engineering Alex Pujols explained in a Monday blog post.
Pujols said partners shouldn’t worry about the digital platform cutting into their own expertise. Partners that work with multiple technology lines are at a particular advantage, according to Pujols.
Pujols said Cisco expects partner service revenue to multiply in the coming years after partners learn the platform and customize it to their customers.
“If your business is built on Catalyst Center, Intersight, Meraki, or other Cisco domain expertise, that practice becomes the foundation for a broader conversation,” Pujols said. “The deeper your Cisco expertise, the more credible you are when customers ask what unified Cisco operations should look like in their environment.”
Cisco is not offering Cisco Cloud Control as a new license or charging an uplift.
“The commercial opportunity is in using Cisco Cloud Control to expand and deepen the customer relationships partners already have, rather than selling it as a standalone product,” Pujols said.
The platform is free to partners in Cisco’s advantage and essentials tiers. The work and the opportunity are convincing customers that they need someone to run it for them.
