Cisco Seeks 10,000 New Certified Partners in Small Business Push

To earn Select status, solution providers will need to pass Cisco's newly launched SMB specialization, including two days of online training each for a technical and sales role, covering routing, switching, security and wireless. Unified communications will be added later this year. A single person can fill both roles, a departure from Cisco's current strategy of banning role-sharing in its other certification levels. The role-sharing ban is still in place for Premier, Silver and Gold partners, Sage said.

In exchange for earning the SMB specialization and Select certification, partners gain access to free SMB-focused e-learning content, the ability to brand themselves as certified partners to verify their skills to customers, participation in Cisco's financial incentive programs, including the Value Incentive Program back-end rebate initiative and its Opportunity Incentive Program for deal registration. Cisco is lowering the threshold for OIP to $10,000 to open it up to smaller deals, Sage said. The previous floor was $30,000.

In addition, qualified Select partners are eligible to receive Cisco's new partner development funds based on a percentage of the partner's Cisco sales. The program enables partners to purchase demo equipment, use the funds for training or marketing, or apply the funds to their bottom line, Sage said. Select partners also have an assigned channel account manager.

None of these benefits are available to Registered partners, meaning that the financial benefits to partners that take the plunge to join the Certified Partner program stand to be large, Sage said.

"To a large extent, you get out of it what you put into it, but certainly we will take advantage of the marketing opportunities and programs as well as the training opportunities," Apogee's Gendell said. "At this point it's difficult to put a bottom-line figure on it, but the investment to attain the certification is minimal compared to the benefits."

NEXT: Cisco VoIP gets smart for small business