Lucky Number 7

Cisco Systems is giving partners a road map of how to create cloud professional service practices to deliver hybrid IT by launching seven new cloud services available to certified partners.

Cisco Cloud Reseller partners who want to thrive in the hybrid IT era and capture the fast-growing $20 billion professional services opportunity can sell offerings from a new library of cloud professional services assembled by Cisco in conjunction with the Cisco Advanced services team and incorporating best practices from Cisco channel partners.

"We know that for partners to be successful they need to add more of their own value. The only way they can add more of their own value, especially as hardware revenues are being extended over longer periods of time [as part of a recurring revenue model], is to add more professional services. For the first time, we're actually now packaging up professional services to enable our partners to deliver them," said Edison Peres, senior vice president of the cloud and managed services partner organization at Cisco, at the 2015 Cisco Partner Summit Wednesday.

Here's a look at the new options.