Networking News
How Cisco Partner Lifecycle Services Are Reaching ‘Critical Mass’ Ahead Of GA Launch: Exclusive
Gina Narcisi
Cisco’s Denzil Samuels talked about the passionate response partners have had for Cisco Partner Lifecycle Services (PLS) and the work the tech giant has done to ready the portfolio for the masses ahead of its GA launch at Cisco Live in June.
PLS Reaching Primetime
Cisco Systems has been pushing the importance of lifecycle services to partners for the last several years, especially as changing buying behaviors are almost demanding the channel to build out managed services practices. Luckily, many Cisco partners are already well down the lifecycle and customer experience road. In fact, Denzil Samuels, Cisco’s vice president of Global CX Partner Success who has been with the company since the start of 2021, said that Cisco Partner Lifecycle Services, or PLS, is reaching critical mass this year.
PLS registration opened at Cisco Partner Summit in November and as of April, Cisco had 511 partner individuals registered, representing 274 partner companies. Of those 274, 174 companies are now eligible. PLS solution support will become generally available in June at Cisco Live 2022. PLS, said Samuels, is an all-encompassing suite of offerings that will allow eligible partners to deliver new customer experience, or CX services to customers under their own brand, powered by Cisco-provided insights, analytics and offers.
Samuels has been instrumental in connecting partners with Cisco services and recently caught CRN up in advance of the general availability of PLS to discuss the evolution of the partner success journey, the connection between PLS and managed and everything as a service, the preparation Cisco has done to ready itself and its partners for PLS, and how Cisco’s PLS strategy stands out from competing vendors also focused on lifecycle services.
What follows are excerpts from the conversation.
