Cisco IQ “will become a really, really powerful tool in the bag of our partners”, Cisco channel boss Tim Coogan promised as he announced its general availability to partners alongside a slew of new Cisco 360 incentives.
First unveiled at Cisco’s Partner Summit in San Diego last November, Cisco IQ went on general availability in April.
The networking giant yesterday announced its general availability for partners as it kicked off this year’s Partner Summit in Vancouver.
It is designed to consolidate Cisco’s support services, professional services, telemetry and asset management tools on a single platform.
“That changes today”
On a pre-briefing ahead of the event, Coogan described Cisco IQ as a “platform” partners can use “to deliver new services, revenues, capabilities, and a different kind of buying and user experience for our clients”.
“Cisco IQ will become a really, really powerful tool in the bag of our partners,” he said on the call.
Around 15,000 customers are already using Cisco IQ on a global basis, Vikas Butaney, Senior Vice President of Customer Experience Product Management and Marketing, said.
This enables Cisco to “see” 18 million devices, including “uncovered” ones lacking any support or coverage.
“That is an opportunity for our partners to be able to sell standard support,” he said.
“This patch velocity is changing, as vulnerabilities are getting exposed – our customers need help. They need help migrating to a new operating model. They need help refreshing their infrastructure base, and that’s another opportunity for our partners to come in and help our end customers to be able to deal with this environment.”
Today’s announcement means Cisco is putting all these insights and capabilities at partners’ “fingertips” via APIs, Butaney said.
“For too long, partners walked into customer conversations without the same view Cisco had. That changes today,” Liz Centoni, EVP and Chief Customer Experience Officer at Cisco, added in a statement.
“Not a set-it-and-forget-it mentality”
The Cisco IQ news came as the vendor announced a slew of new goodies for Cisco 360, the partner programme that went live in January to a mixed partner reception.
This includes new incentives relating to Cisco IQ, including a new Cisco IQ CPI Adopt Rebate and a 6% deal registration for partners when they sell Cisco’s Standard and Signature support offerings.
The vendor has also raised by two percentage points its cross-sell rebate for partners who expand customers into new architectures such as Splunk.
Additionally, Cisco is introducing a new ‘Ecosystem Deal Registration’ that enables Advisors and Developers to be formally recognised for contributions that lead to transactions. Advisor and Developer Partner Value Indexes (PVIs) are also now available, while a new unified Distributor PVI will be available by Spring of 2027.
Cisco is “deeply committed” to an iterative process with 360, Coogan said, stressing that its predecessor VIP programme had 46 versions over 23 years.
“It’s not a set-it-and-forget-it mentality,” he said.
“We believe that feedback is the constant source, and we have already made numerous changes [around] deal registration in our services organisation.
“That’s really a fundamental change, and that’s based on feedback from our partners.”
