PT. MasterSystem hopes for ‘full support’ from Cisco with pricing surges

Lintar Wardana, Director of PT. MasterSystem Infotama talks about the perks of being a Cisco360 Preferred Partner, and the perils of managing price wars in Indonesia’s highly competitive market.

Despite any apprehension with the added layers of investment to achieve premium status under the upgraded Cisco360 partner program, Indonesian systems integrator PT. MasterSystem Infotama has managed to become a Preferred Partner in over six categories. They are currently working on their seventh specialization.

MasterSystem also continues to excel as a long-time Cisco partner, and was crowned the 2026 ASEAN winner for the innovation challenge. This follows their win last year as APJC’s commercial partner of the year in 2025.

“It’s different with Cisco Gold partner,” Lintar Wardana, Director of MasterSystem told CRN Asia. “Now, Cisco measures their partners based on architecture instead of just the whole company, so we have to invest a lot in expertise in Black Belt.”

However, Wardana shared that the new program has improved their customer experience capabilities.

“Cisco360 has helped us a lot when we have a discussion with customers, because it proves that we have the expertise with regards to the architectures that we get a preferred partner,” he said.

Proven expertise offers a leg up

For instance, having attained preferred status in Cisco security has eased their ability to help customers implement and deploy solutions.

This elevated level of expertise has come in handy in a highly competitive and price-sensitive market like Indonesia. Pricing surges across the tech industry are nothing new, however Wardana explained that aggressive competition between Eastern and Western providers have been a real challenge for channel partners.

“Some Cisco solutions are a bit more expensive than others, so [customers express] budget constraints,” he said. “One of the challenges is we have to effectively demonstrate the TCO [total cost of ownership] as well as the long-term value of implementing Cisco’s premium infrastructures.”

When asked how MasterSystem deals with the competitive environment, Wardana said: it depends.

“Some [customers] are Cisco supporters, so it’s easier to sell a Cisco solution or Western product,” he said. “Other times customers, like telcos, decide that the Western areas are covered by Western products, while Eastern areas are covered by Eastern products.

“So we still have a market, but smaller.

“There are situations where we have to compete with Eastern products in terms of technology as well as pricing.”

‘We need full support from Cisco’

He went on to explain that price wars have become more challenging as Eastern technology vendors are especially aggressive in countries like Indonesia, where not only is it one of the biggest markets in ASEAN, but also likely one of their few target markets overseas.

“In the situation of a price-sensitive market, we need full support from Cisco, especially with regards to our strategic customers,” said Wardana. “We don’t want to lose the battle, right?

“We are very confident when we are talking about technology, compared to Eastern products, but pricing-wise we need full support.”

That said, Wardana is looking forward to more training and enablement from Cisco, and is keen to see what else the vendor comes up with in the coming year.

“Cisco has to have more innovations and breakthroughs compared to others — especially in the AI era,” he said. “We want to bring Cisco into every AI conversation in terms of the network perspective, since networking is the bread and butter of Cisco’s business.”