Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins (pictured) told the assembled throngs at a 2019 partner shindig that nearly 90 percent of his outfit’s business was through the channel.
He said that Cisco was committed to doing business through its partners and our partners are bringing such value to Cisco customers, particularly as it makes its transition to software, helping customers adopt and gain value out of the software assets.
“I’m sure that’s been part of it, but we’ve just been very committed that as we go through the transition we’ve gone through, we’re going to do it with our partners. I’ve joked with people that in many cases, I don’t know what that might look like, but we are committed to doing it”, he said.
He said that the rise of SaaS applications and being able to deliver solutions as a service certainly make it easier to serve small businesses. SMEs wanted simple technology that helps them run their businesses more effectively, which is absolutely different than what Cisco has done in the past.
Robbins said that he didn’t see Amazon as a data centre competitor: “I would suspect we’re looking at opportunities where we can partner to bring whatever value we bring, to whatever they believe they need to put on-prem from an equipment perspective. From a solution stack [perspective], I’m sure there will be more and more opportunities over the coming years to work with them. ”
Cisco is doubling its funding around the AppDynamics partner programme, which Robbins sees as a significant play,
“You are going to see us invest heavily there. I think for many of our partners, as our customers continue to evolve how they develop applications, they are going to need these modern capabilities to operate and run these applications, optimise these applications, and bringing all these pieces together to help our customers do that, I think, is a very big opportunity for our partners,”
