Cisco Chief Sales Officer Oliver Tuszik On Cisco 360 And ‘Huge’ AI Infrastructure, Security Opportunities For Partners

‘Cisco and the partners have never been in a better position because whatever is happening, it will need more technology. It will need more security. It will need an infrastructure that can cope. It needs more automation. … I have not seen a single customer [at Cisco Live 2025] who didn’t tell me that they will continue to invest in infrastructure and upgrade security,’ Cisco Chief Sales Officer Oliver Tuszik tells CRN.

Oliver Tuszik, Cisco’s executive vice president of global sales and chief sales officer, believes that now is the time for partners to “follow fast” around the emerging opportunities that AI is creating.

The evolving landscape of AI is sparking critical needs around infrastructure and security as AI workloads strain and push the boundaries of much of the enterprise infrastructure that’s in place today. But before any upgrades or refreshes occur, Cisco channel partners must develop clear AI strategies and use cases. This won’t come without challenges, Tuszik said. Notably, the lack of long-term AI experience and the competition for skilled professionals plagues many partners today, so training and education will be critical.

And then there’s Cisco 360, the tech giant’s partner program that’s in the process of being completely revamped. Tuszik, who served as Cisco’s beloved global channel chief for five years, recognizes there will be some growing pains as some partners adjust their business to stay profitable with Cisco, but stressed that now is the time to adapt and shift business in favor of value-added services.

Tuszik, Cisco's former EMEA president before joining the executive leadership team as the company’s chief sales officer in April, stressed the importance of partnerships and adapting to changing customer needs. He also highlighted the continued growth in infrastructure and data center investments despite market uncertainties in a conversation with CRN last week at Cisco Live 2025.

Here’s what Tuszik had to say.

What do partners have to do to help businesses accommodate AI in their IT environments?

The interesting thing is, we’re experiencing something that we’ve seen before with cloud. It’s the same thing where if you’re not jumping on the AI train, you’re not a modern CIO. So the first thing that you need to do is you need to have an AI strategy, and a lot of people are missing that. You need to have an AI use case, something that gives you an ROI. We see a lot of customers investing in capabilities faster than they are ready to build their own use cases. It’s getting better, and I believe the good thing right now—because of the time pressure we have on this one—is that for partners it’s one of the biggest opportunities. On the other side, just be very clear, the partners are also challenged because they’re not able to look back on 20 years of AI experience. And if they look for their design models, their blueprints, their experienced people, they don’t have them. Everybody says, ‘Oh, we need to hire them.’ But they also know the market. The few people that do [have the AI know-how] mainly want to work for Nvidia or some of the pure AI startups. So, it’s about learning and training and educating your existing team. Therefore, I believe it’s a huge opportunity.

Partners need to be careful what they are trying to be in the AI space. We see a lot of rather smaller partners and, of course, the really big consulting partners are doing an amazing job of becoming kind of an AI data-focused, use-case-focused adviser. They’re doing an amazing job, but they’re rather small [partners] normally. And then there’s the rest, which is a big business, that is focusing on helping [customers] build up sustainable, scalable AI infrastructure because it’s not like all infrastructure in the world is fully set up, stable and up to date. Most companies were already in phases where they needed to update, mainly because of security and the request for lower latency, higher availability, [all those] things. And now on top of this one comes the big AI thing. It’s kind of scary for some [customers]. We had the executive symposium and DJ [Sampath, vice president of product, AI software and platform for Cisco], asked the question, ‘Who believes they have a good overview on all the AI agents that are used within [their] company?’ Nobody raised their hand. Also, when you talk to some of our customers, it’s interesting because they are kind of in a difficult spot. They want to empower people to utilize AI because they know if [they] don’t, [their] competitor will, or if [they] don’t offer it to [their] people, they might move to another company. But then on the other side, they get asked, ‘Please ensure that this is all 100 percent secure and safe, and that none of our data is shared to the public.’ Some of these models create an open door for any type of attack, which is, again, another huge opportunity for our partners. I’m not talking only about AI Defense, but [also] all the other tools that we have to make your infrastructure more secure is a huge opportunity.

How big is the AI data center opportunity right now for partners?

It’s a completely new kind of motion. Before the AI wave really started, we saw already something that even Gartner called the ‘repatriation of cloud.’ And what was happening? It was mainly driven by two things. It was driven by cost, and it was driven by latencies because there was a need for more local, edge computing. Now, on top of this is a new thing. When companies think about building their AI data centers, they need to separate between the training and fine-tuning-kind of motion, and then they get to the point: ‘Do I do this within my own area, or can I use a cloud provider?’ And depending on where you are in the world, there’s a bit more concern about your data. We’re talking about the gold of the company. The biggest asset is their data. Look at Cisco, our key differentiator is that we have data from about 40 years of managing networks. Whatever problem has occurred in the world, we’ve seen it before. So now, these customers are thinking about, ‘Should I really move this into the cloud?’ But when they start to use it in daily business, they need low latencies. If you ever talk to a chatbot who takes two seconds before it responds, you know you have a problem. So, there’s a shift to build up these new data centers on the customer side. Don’t get me wrong, just to be clear, cloud will grow. But I think that it will be a bit more balanced and there will be an increasing amount of on-premises and hybrid solutions.

With the data center opportunity and infrastructure constraints impacting AI adoption, where should partners get started with helping customers?

If you are a partner, you have certain assets. Something that makes you special. Remember the ‘own your edge’ story? So, depending on where you’re coming from, start with that. Don’t start with the technology from Cisco or anything else. Start with, ‘What makes me special? Why do I win? Why do customers see value?’ And you might be great in creating data centers or designing and scaling data center infrastructure. Then just add the idea of AI with maximum compute power. Or you might be a company who’s amazing on the security side. Just think about the new security threat factor that is coming up and how you can help. Or you might be a very small, very specialized, focused partner for a certain vertical segment. Then build the story for your segment. And the golden rule—which has always been the rule, but it’s becoming more dominant—is partner, partner, partner. You can’t win a deal doing it on your own.

Look at us. We’re partnering with Nvidia, AMD, Intel, NetApp, with Nutanix, [etc.] because it’s very clear this is complex, but we, Cisco, together with our partners, need to reduce the complexity for our customers. When we had VCE FlexPod, which was a kind of a model we built together with VMware and EMC, it was a kind of a HyperFlex, full-stack solution. And why did we do this? Not because these companies loved each other, but] because we [were] addressing a need from the customer. They don’t want to buy all the pieces. They want to get a wrapped package. One analyst said that what we’re [doing] now with AI Pod is kind of like VCE on steroids. It’s just utilizing the old model that we had. Keep in mind, if you buy 10 pieces, you as a customer [are] responsible for sticking it together. If something is not working, you need to first find out who was and whomever you go to would say, ‘It wasn’t me.’ So we’re utilizing the same model again [to] make it very easy to jump-start this. And it’s a scalable motion. You can have them pretty small, [start with] 8-bit GPUs to really ramp up your game there.

How are you staying visible with partners in your new role as part of the Executive Leadership Team?

I got a lot of nice comments and feedback [on my role as executive vice president of global sales] and partners seem to be pretty happy, but I will not change the structure at Cisco. What partners knew before is maybe a bit more dominant and present right now. I don’t think it will be a fundamental change. Cisco is and remains 100 percent partner-focused. The CEO is a channel leader, so what do you expect from us? I think I might be a bit faster in some areas, maybe clearer, and I might be also a bit more direct with some of our partners as we are moving through some changes. It’s key that we move fast on this one because, take Cisco 360. It’s a change, but even if I didn’t call it Cisco 360, I’ve been talking about the changes on the services side and moving more to value and outcome. That was something that was coming, and maybe it took too long already, but will there be a time in between where some of us might be challenged? For sure, but we do this often. We [make] changes [to the partner program]. We stick to the partner that adds the real value, and nothing will change that.

I spoke to one partner who came to me and said, ‘All of the changes you’re driving have a massive impact on my business.’ And I said, ‘I remember having a meeting with you about four years ago. I told you this will come. Make your changes to adapt. Now you need to move very fast.’ Don’t get me wrong. When I was running a partner [organization], I always [had] the logic: ‘Follow fast, be the first.’ It might be painful at the beginning, but you normally win.

What’s the message that you want partners to carry into the second half of 2025?

I know the world is crazy. The surprises are every day, and it might sound surprising, but I believe this industry and Cisco and the partners have never been in a better position because whatever is happening, it will need more technology. It will need more security. It will need an infrastructure that can cope. It needs more automation. So if you're in this business and doing your job the right way, the opportunity is there. I have not seen a single customer [at Cisco Live 2025] who didn’t tell me that they will continue to invest in infrastructure and upgrade security. So we are in an industry that is still growing. In the countries we operate in, on average, the addressable market is growing twice as fast as the GDP.