Cisco360 builds profitability, predictability and growth for partners

For Tim Coogan, Senior Vice President, Global Partner Sales at Cisco, the Cisco360 program is designed to support partners with different go to market opportunities.

For Tim Coogan, Senior Vice President, Global Partner Sales at Cisco, the Cisco360 program is designed to support partners with different go to market opportunities. This includes making sure specialized and technical partners can thrive on the platform. Coogan explained that this is also why Cisco is trying to do a bit of balancing to support all kinds of partners and their particular go-to market.

The new program simplifies the complex previous partner structure with a focus on profitability and predictability. New features, such as the Partner Value Index (PVI) and the Cisco Partner Incentive (CPI), will measure and reward the investments that partners are making Cisco’s broad portfolio.

Looking at Cisco360 in Asia, Coogan acknowledged that the partner make up in Asia is different as there are more partners to get the threshold.

“Change is hard. We are asking partners to go through a model change as the benefit passes through partner to customers. This is why the program is codesigned with partners and has gone through countless changes in the past year, and we expect to continue to modify over the next 90 days. There will be some tougher parts, and we have to be open to those cases. But we must make sure we don’t impact the long-term change. We need to encourage change through growth, and it will require hard work in some places. Changes can be hard, and we want to make sure we are with our partners in every part of the way,” said Coogan.

For Coogan, as customers are deploying AI agents, buying AI-ready infrastructure, navigating security threats they've never seen before, they don't just need products and need more than that.

“They need partners that can advise, design, implement, adopt, and manage over time. On average, there are 28 customer touchpoints before a customer buys anything. That's a partnership and a relationship journey. The Cisco360 Partner Program rewards that journey. We're working with you across the life cycle and not just at the transaction. Think land, adopt, expand, and renew. Because that's where customer value is created. And that's where your profitability comes from. Together, these drive what I call durable growth. Not a blowout quarter followed by chaos and not growth at any cost. Durable growth where you can build a business on and growth you can plan a business around,” said Coogan in his keynote address at the summit.

According to Elisabeth De Dobbeleer, the Cisco360 program brings together what partners need most. It is built around three focus areas which are profitability, predictability and growth.

“I know what some of you are feeling about this difficult program, and that's been a lot of change, not just with Cisco in the industry, with our peers and our competitors as well. So, you may be nervous, or you may be worried. We want you to trust that we have your back” said De Dobbeleer in her address at the Cisco Partner Summit in San Diego.

As Coogan puts it, “Successful partnerships aren't built on what we can do for you. It's built on what we can accomplish together. I think of that every day. When we combine Cisco's innovation with your market expertise and customer relationships, we create something that no competitor can match. And I mean no competitor can match. We're not just navigating change. We're building an ecosystem that's ready for whatever comes next.”

Cisco IQ and Security Cloud Control for MSPs

As the new partner program enters its last three months before it goes live, Cisco has also unveiled several tools to help partners plan and prepare for the new program. This includes the launch of Cisco IQ and Security Cloud for MSPs.

Cisco IQ is a brand-new digital interface for customers and partners that brings the power of AI into Cisco support and professional services. Cisco IQ brings real-time insights, on-demand assessments, troubleshooting and personalized learning, automation and agents from across professional services and support together in a single interface. The offering will help customers plan, deploy, manage, secure and optimize technology investments with greater speed and simplicity while adapting to their unique environments, Cisco said.

Cisco IQ comes in flexible deployment options, including SaaS, on-prem tethered, or on-prem air-gapped. The offering is expected to be available in the second half of Cisco's fiscal 2026, which begins in February.

As Cisco wants to simplify security for MSPs while growing its next-generation, mesh firewall deployments, the network and security vendor introduced multi-customer management capabilities within Cisco Security Cloud Control platform that's been purposely designed with MSPs in mind.

Cisco Security Cloud Control brings centralized security management and real-time insights in combination with AI-powered protection for businesses. Now geared toward the MSP, Security Cloud Control for MSPs will help streamline operations, reduce costs, and accelerate managed security service practices for partners, Cisco said. The platform will also help MSPs accelerate the adoption of hybrid mesh firewalls and bundle multiple security tools, the company said. Security Cloud Control for MSPs is expected to be generally available in February.

With additional reporting from Gina Narcisi