IT networking multinational Cisco has made a series of announcements on its forward movement on the Internet of Everything (IoE).
While company Chief Executive Officer (CEO) John Chambers, in his keynote address at the on-going, ‘Cisco Marketing Velocity and Partner Summit 2015’ in Montreal, Canada, on Monday, outlined the larger picture and spoke of the coming changes, Bruce Klein, the company’s Senior Vice President, Worldwide Partner organisations spelled out the actual additions to the Cisco Partner ecosystem.
This Ecosystem, he claimed, had achieved in just one short year, “remarkable success.”
“We are moving onward with determination, connecting new partner types and turning IoE from a budding opportunity to a profit engine for partners,” wrote Bruce on the official Cisco blog. “Furthermore”, he said, “you heard us talk about the bold growth opportunities around solutions, hybrid IT and software, and how we’re helping partners build and expand these capabilities into their practices today.”
On stage, Bruce made a series of announcements that will help Cisco partners “capitalise on this new era of IT as part of the Cisco Partner Ecosystem.”
These include:
- A new Software Partner Program
- Next generation of the Cisco Cloud and Managed Services Partner Program
Both of these would help partners expand their software, services and hybrid Cloud practices through new partner roles and incentives, Bruce added.
Earlier, it was to a packed house at the Palais de congrès de Montreal on Monday morning that Bruce kicked off the Cisco Partner Summit 2015. The nearly week-long meet is being attended by Cisco’s 2,200 partners and 7,500 virtual attendees around the world.
‘Being Bold’ is this year’s Partner Summit’s theme.
In his address, the CISCO CEO said, “There is a transformation that’s going to digitize governments, companies and countries. Cisco has the ability to lead here. I truly think this next year is an inflection point where every company starts to become a digital company. If companies don’t change, they are going to be left behind, because either you disrupt, or you’re going to get disrupted.”
It was at last year’s Partner Summit that John had mentioned that the pace of change was exponential. This year, he pointed out, it was only getting faster. In fact, according to a Fast Company statistic he shared on stage, in 10 years it is predicted that 40 percent of Enterprise companies would no longer exist.
John went on to say that CEOs today were under more pressure than ever before. With the exponential pace of change, they had to accept that their companies would change, but moving to a completely digital company would change the face of their companies. In all likelihood, the step would result in a complete re-organisation of their workforce and a change in a lot of their leadership in order to move forward and keep pace.
John mentioned that companies tend to succeed or fail based on a couple of key things:
- Market Transitions: You can’t afford to miss a single one
- Right thing too long: Doing the right thing in business too long will eventually lose you money. (i.e. you’ll get disrupted)
- Reinvent: It is hard to reinvent yourself and no one really loves to do it, but you have to do it. Otherwise you will miss those coming transitions
- Customer/Partner Driven: You have to do the first three things right in order to keep pleasing your customers/partners
John pointed out that even government leaders had come to understand the transformation that was happening. “We are all in the sweet spot of where these transitions are happening. Cisco and its partners are poised to take advantage of the changes. But you must ask yourselves: are you positioned to deliver the outcomes our customers want, or are you still selling the way you always have?”, added John.
John did do some hard-selling on behalf of Cisco, saying if anyone in the world was going to be able to keep with how fast things were changing, and to be successful, it would be Cisco partners.
John said he was convinced that every business, city and country will become digital, not over the course of the next 20 years, but much faster. He predicted that the change will happen within the next five to 10 years. “We are already seeing some of these changes happen”.
The Cisco CEO that welcomed CEO of Rockwell Automation Keith Nosbusch on the stage. The duo proceeded to discuss how Rockwell was already more of a technology company than a manufacturing company, and how in the near future it would become a truly digital company.
Taking over, Bruce Klein pointed out how disruption was definitely changing all industries, and used Netflix as an example. Netflix disrupted Blockbuster’s model, and Blockbuster ended up being left behind because they missed a market transition. Netflix didn’t just keep doing the right thing for too long though. Instead they kept innovating and they kept changing. They started streaming video. They embedded their app into televisions. They were now even producing their own Content, Bruce pointed out.
“We have to evolve and catch these market transitions together. Cisco will create programs to help partners capture those transitions.”
Bruce then made some announcements for this year’s Partner Summit, including one around the Cisco Software Partner Program, which introduced three new roles for partners:
- Software Lifecycle Advisor
- Software Consultant
- Software Integrator
You may also want to read: Cisco to put in 15 million USD in IoT innovation centre in Australia
Image Credit: Cisco blog
Video Credit: YouTube/Cisco
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