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The renewed focus by Cisco is allowing partners to spend less time worried about Cisco field engagements and more time on their Cisco investments.
"They went through a lot last year, and that could have caused a lot of disruption," said Tony Balistrieri, vice president of partner strategy at FusionStorm, a San Francisco-based solution provider. "But they're going back and getting their market share, anything they've lost. We're growing with UCS [Cisco's Unified Computing System] and we sell a lot of high-end switches, but mobility and UC are major parts of our business, too. They're coming in, giving concise messages and are a great team to work with."
"They are listening," said Pete Belyea, president of Teracai, a Syracuse, N.Y.-based solution provider. "Cisco's always listened better, I think, than any of the other manufacturers, but we have seen that greater willingness to understand our feedback."
Harry Zarek, president and CEO of Compugen, a Richmond Hill, Ontario-based solution provider, said Cisco's new Services Partner Program is a prime example of Cisco converting partner feedback into actions.
"We steered them in this direction," Zarek said, referring to partners urging Cisco to build profitability programs around its fast-expanding services businesses. "And what you see now is a real 'get on with it' attitude from Cisco in the field."
Customers also are believing in Cisco's architectural visions, solution providers agreed, as they make their bets on next-generation cloud infrastructure.
"We started down the architecture path before Cisco did and today, the data center especially, is a land grab," said Mark Melvin, CTO of ePlus. "If you win in architecture, you're going to be in the game awhile. It's hard to take an architecture out. If you're not in architecture, you're not going to get a seat at the table."
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