Cisco has effected several changes in its partner strategy in India and abroad to be better placed to leverage these opportunities. The company has revamped it Partner Model to align it with the company’s renewed business objectives.

 Speaking at a press briefing earlier today to shed light on some of these changes, Raghavendran Vice President and Head – Partner Organization, Cisco India & SAARC said, “The channel organization and strategic alliance organization have been merged into a single, cohesive unit, rechristened Partner Organization. We believe that this will allow us to drive our identified architecture adoption among our channel partners and increase penetration across sectors and markets alike.”

Cisco also shared changes to its commercial business strategy. At the heart of this shift is the basic need to drive coverage in an increasingly competitive landscape by effectively supporting the partner network with better, richer, and faster offerings. The new partner - led strategy has resulted in the seamless integration of Cisco’s Go-To-Market and the Cisco sales team, with the partners becoming an extension of the company’s sales force.

 In the Small Business segment in particular, a more scalable virtual touch model has been implemented in order to reach lower end partners and deliver more route-to-market specific messaging.

Under the new alignment, Cisco India has divided its channel partners into 5 categories, each catering to a specific business objective and market segment.