The Model Of The Future

Managed services haven’t just become a popular offering for the channel and a sought-after way to consume technology for businesses, it’s also the biggest route to market for Cisco Systems.

Businesses all over the world have seen their IT budgets and requirements change over the last two years. Many organizations either don‘t want or can’t afford CAPEX spends anymore and managed services have ushered in a new way to buy IT that allow customers to grow as they need, offload daily tasks associated with monitoring and managing the solution and supporting their increasingly hybrid workforces. But the managed services model isn‘t how Cisco has historically gone to market. That’s why the San Jose, Calif.-based tech giant has been working behind the scenes within its own organization to support managed services and promote these sales through its critical channel ecosystem – many of which are experienced MSPs.

Alexandra Zagury, vice president of partner managed services and as-a-service sales, sat down with CRN ahead of the company’s managed services roundtable for press and analysts last week to talk about how Cisco is approaching the increasingly important route to market, the changes Cisco is making internally to its systems to support managed services, the connection between managed services and the everything as a service (XaaS) model, and what the company is doing specifically to help more partners sell managed offerings.

Here are excerpts from the conversation.