Cisco APAC partners hyped on unprecedented new partner program

For Kartika Prihadi, VP, APJC Partners and Routes to Market Sales at Cisco, the way Cisco has rolled out the new program is unique compared to how other vendors have done it.

About 300 partners from the Asia Pacific region are expected to attend the Cisco Partner Summit 2025 in San Diego. With the new Cisco 360 program just a few months away from going live, partners attending the summit will be looking to get the most they can from the Cisco leadership.

In an exclusive conversation with CRN Asia, Kartika Prihadi, VP, APJC Partners and Routes to Market Sales at Cisco, said this year’s summit will be really critical for the network and security vendor following the announcements on the 360 program in the 2024 summit.

“There was the big announcement in the last summit and obviously we gave partners time to co-design process and everything else. We are now in the qualification period of our program, and there’s going to be obviously more announcements and panel summits around the topics, and more details shared around the profitability piece of the program. The profitability piece is going to be big and also there'll be some solutions products announcements as well,” Prihadi said.

Prihadi also highlighted that despite some leadership changes in Cisco, the program is still on scheduled to be launched in February 2026 and that Cisco will continue to refine the program as they go along.

An unprecedented program

For Prihadi, the way Cisco has rolled out the new program is unique compared to how other vendors have done it.

“It's a bit unprecedented in some ways. We gave almost 15 months to our partners, which is a reasonable amount of time. But I think what is really unique, which I think other vendors have not done similarly, is around the co-design process. When we launched the program, we presented the conceptual framework, and then we went through the design process. We released the version and then we went through the process, through the surveys, interviews, and such. We engaged with our partners here, getting their feedback, and so forth,” Prihadi explained.

Prihadi also acknowledged that there was a lot of apprehension initially but over time, the tone has changed because of the release that Cisco announced in June, which kind of brought all the co-design elements together. He believes this has definitely changed the tone of partners.

“If you look at how the market is changing due to AI, the pace of innovation is changing also very quickly. We did a much better job during the co-design process. So by just explaining the whole logic and rationale of the new program, partners understood more and also agreed on the need. They are now focused on the actions, which would be how they implement it. For example, how do they get to the right position in the program? How to be a preferred partner or portfolio partner? So, it became more concrete, and there was action. We have our team supporting them along the way. They would also look at how does new program works financially, with the incentives and so forth,” Prihadi added.

Coping with innovation

Looking at the innovation in Cisco over the past twelve months, Prihadi pointed out that this is an area where partners are still needing help, especially in coping with the speed of changes and products that Cisco is bringing to the market.

Citing Cisco’s annual partner study, Prihadi mentioned that while partners are excited about the innovations announced, they are wanting to be in lockstep with Cisco as well.

“Some of the new things that we are going to announce also is how do we help our partners also, basically be able to understand and deliver the new innovations. We will focus on making sure they keep pace with innovation,” he said.

All about value for customers

With partners understanding the new program better, the next focus is on how they can bring value to the customers. Hence, Prihadi explained that there continues to be a strong focus partner specialization and deep capabilities, especially in engaging customers end-to-end, across the lifecycle and making sure that Cisco’s solutions are now only adopted but also have the availability to offer customers different routes. This may be in terms of managed services or whichever way the customer wants it.

“It's very much market-facing, a market-in view of what customers want. So along with that, partners have made suggestions on what they would like to see. For example, improvements around the adoption program on how we can make sure that they get the use cases. We have more use cases and they get feedback. But they also want to be credited for giving and making our customers adopt more use cases than we have today. A lot of the feedback has been incorporated, but we anticipate that we will continue to refine,” Prihadi said.

“If you look at where the business is in APAC, almost all the markets are going in a healthy direction. We need to maintain that portfolio focus because in a way, we are, in this region, we have a portfolio of countries and theatres with different maturities. They may differ in market maturity. We may tweak some investments here and there, but generally, we have to make sure that we are looking at each market,” he concluded.