Cisco Channel Chief Tim Coogan: Partners Leaning Into 360 Are Pulling Ahead On Profitability

Cisco channel chief Tim Coogan says the Cisco 360 partner program “was never designed to be what it was at launch and never change.” In an exclusive interview with CRN, Coogan explains why partners that lean in are pulling ahead on profitability and how Cisco IQ opens the door to managed services revenue.

Cisco channel chief Tim Coogan says the Cisco 360 partner program was never meant to stay the way it was at launch. And the partners that are leaning into the evolving program are already pulling ahead, he said.

The tech giant is coming off of a vibrant Cisco Partner Summit 2026, an event in which Coogan said the news payload demonstrated what the 360 platform was built to enable. That includes the new Secure Networking and Secure AI specializations, a more robust cross-sell incentive that covers Splunk, and a revamped Partner Experience Platform meant to give partners one place to see where they stand, what gaps they need to close and how they get paid. Coogan said the goal is to maximize partner revenue and profit while keeping the program simple.

Coogan also explained why Cisco IQ, the company’s AI-powered digital interface that brings its support and professional services capabilities into a single platform, isn’t being offered as a standalone product, but rather, the foundation for partner services. IQ gives partners real-time visibility into the health of a customer’s infrastructure, which opens the door to recurring and managed services.

Nearly a year into the program, Coogan said results haven’t been even across partners and regions, but partners have exceeded Cisco’s training expectations, with more than 657,000 Black Belt certifications and 12,300 new career certifications by his count. In an exclusive interview with CRN, Coogan discussed how Cisco will keep modifying the program to reward partners for moving beyond the initial sale, the managed services opportunity in Cisco IQ, and what will tell him Cisco 360 is a success by its second birthday.

Here are excerpts from the interview.

Partners are looking to increase profitability through lifecycle services. What separates the ones seeing results under Cisco 360 from everyone else right now, and how does the program’s design reward them?

The Cisco 360 Partner Program was built with many things in mind, but let me lay it out. We wanted it to be an incentive program that rewarded specialty and breadth with equal ferocity. We didn’t want to exclude a smaller, bespoke, focused partner. You could use Splunk, security, or collaboration as examples. We’ve given that kind of partner the ability to compete with very large partners based on their specialty. But at the same time, we’ve provided a platform where partners invest across the portfolio. They can then thread together multiple pieces of the portfolio for common value to the client. What does that all mean? I haven’t always loved the cliché that one plus one is three, but it gives the partner that can do that the opportunity to say: This plus this is something more powerful.

I’m going to paraphrase Jeetu Patel [Cisco’s chief product officer]. He says, “When you buy more than one thing from a single vendor, that second purchase should be magical …” That is the vision that we have for Cisco and our portfolio. As you do more with us, it not only allows you to do one more thing, it allows everything that you’re already doing to become more powerful. Splunk by Cisco is not just Splunk for all its value. It’s Splunk for the value that it brings to your security and observability posture. Again, it should be an exponential experience.

Liz Centoni called Cisco IQ a new profit engine for partners. What makes IQ different from other management and visibility tools, and where do you see the biggest services opportunity for partners?

Here’s what I love about [Cisco] IQ. IQ is not a product. We don’t sell it. IQ becomes a platform for the incremental services that I think separate our partner ecosystem from other parts of the industry. What I mean by that is, partners certainly earn when they sell Cisco products and services, but we believe that the exponential value for driving profit and value comes from what they do with what they sell. We’ve had different consultants, Omdia for instance, call it a 6x multiplier. For every dollar of Cisco revenue, there was a 6x opportunity for additive services. We believe that IQ becomes a fundamental heart of that foundation. It says a customer that has adopted IQ, a partner that is leveraging it as part of their interactions with that client, then has a foundation to add valuable services on top of IQ that drive revenue and profitability for the partner, but really drive value for the client.

What kind of new recurring revenue or managed services opportunities do you see that IQ is going to create for partners?

I would say this: one of the biggest expenses customers have is something as simple as [revision] and code control. This will allow for an automated approach to revision control, code health, code hygiene, because that is often something that this industry has been plagued with. You get a call from a customer that says, “Hey, I just found a router or a switch that I haven’t touched in nine years.” Well, it’s fabulous that that device has run well for nine years, but that is not ideal IT management. IQ gives you visibility into whether that is a good scenario or a bad scenario, if that makes sense. So, I think the services opportunity, whether it be managed or otherwise, is that if I know what I have, I know its state of health, I can then have an ongoing and recurring approach to the service and maintenance of that platform.

Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to IT. I’ve been around long enough to know that not knowing is not good. This gives you the ability to know in real time.

Cisco has spent a lot of time talking about secure AI infrastructure this year. What differentiates Cisco’s AI strategy for partners from what competitors are bringing to market?

Every vendor has a story. Here’s why Cisco’s story is different. AI still requires transport. AI unlocks unbelievable power based on data and information and information flow and movement, but it still has to move from point A to point B. That is our heritage and that is our legacy. We have added to that over the years the ability to do that securely. So, the infrastructure for the AI era is only the beginning of the Cisco story. It’s the secure AI infrastructure for the AI era that I think really makes our messaging very different. We believe deeply that our ability to sell network plus security differentiates us in the marketplace. There are others that are trying, but nobody has built out the mature portfolio that we have across networking, security, observability, and all of the things that go around that, including the partner ecosystem, which brings it all together. So, I think it’s that combination of capabilities that makes it so powerful.

Partner Summit delivered the biggest programmatic updates to Cisco 360 since its launch. What changed for partners, and how will it help them drive profitability across the portfolio?

I’m going to have to temper my enthusiasm. [The news payload] really demonstrated the power that that platform was built to enable. What I mean by that [is Cisco] 360 was never designed to be what it was at launch and never change. It was designed to be a platform that allows us to add things like specializations, which we’ve already done with the Secure Networking and the Secure AI specializations, and migrating that to a more robust incentive around cross-sell, including our Splunk capabilities, showing partners a path towards that compounded and incremental profitability opportunity that exists through 360, but also then how it changes the interaction between Cisco and our partners. Cisco’s a very sophisticated machine. We have an innovation engine that Jeetu [Patel] and his team have working at warp speed. We have a rebate and incentive program that gives partners uncapped ability to drive revenue and profitability. But at the same time, we are revolutionizing the partner experience that they have while working with us. I’ve talked about it in a number of forums: the partner organization exists to help our partners maximize revenue and profit, but we also want to do that in a way that’s simple and efficient. So, our Partner Experience Platform … is designed to give our partners one place to go to understand where they are, where they want to go, the gaps to get there, and the resources at their disposal to achieve that objective, and to do that in a way that is simple and efficient.

Partners gauge their interactions with an OEM, in my opinion, based on the ability to drive revenue and profit, but also the effort that it takes to do that. We want to maximize the revenue and profit opportunity for the benefit of our clients, but we also want to do that in a way that’s simple and efficient. I’ve talked to thousands of partners over my career. They don’t want to have to hire people to understand how they get paid.

Nearly a year into Cisco 360, what’s worked better than expected, what lessons have you learned from partner feedback, and how do you measure success moving forward?

What’s worked better than expected, and we had pretty high expectations going into it, [but] our partners have leaned into the challenge we put in front of them in a way that is really quite stunning [with] 657,000 Black Belt certifications and 12,300 new career certifications. That’s a partner ecosystem that says, “Hey, this OEM is leaning into finding a platform for me to be better at what I do.” We had high expectations, and they have exceeded literally all of them with the tenacity that they’ve leaned into raising their game in support of this portfolio. So, that’s one thing that we’ve been very pleased with.

I’m always very honest, it’s not been an even experience for every partner in every region around the world. As we look to find a certain level of parity between what we pay for and driving a higher level of experience through premium and advanced services, through SKU optimization, partners that have leaned in have generally seen great benefit. Quite honestly, those that have chosen to do things more business as usual have not seen as rapid an increase in profitability.

A year from now, what will tell you that the then nearly two-year-old Cisco 360 program is a success? Is it adoption, customer outcomes, something else?

I think it’s going to be a combination of things. As we continue to take our partners on this journey with us, I want to be clear: The transaction will never be unimportant, but the transaction, the actual acquisition of a Cisco product or service, should only be the beginning of the relationship, both with the partner and with the client. If we’re doing our jobs right, and I believe that we are, and I’ll use the acronym for LAER, the land, adopt, expand, and renew model, we should reward the unlocking of value at every step of that model. While land will always be important because it starts the process, one of the things that I believe will be telling is as our partners embrace the adopt, expand, and renew [motions.] Let’s not just sell something. Let’s maximize the value from that sale, and that’s part of that adoption and expansion opportunity.

I think that’s a metric that I’ll look to really closely over the coming years, and I think we’ll modify the program to incent that behavior because, again, we don’t want to just sell products. We want products to enable value, and that comes with adoption.