Cisco’s Partner Innovation Challenge 2023: Celebrating innovation and purpose-driven solutions throughout APJC

To celebrate the exceptional skills of our partner community, Cisco is launching the sixth annual global Cisco Partner Innovation Challenge. Partners from around the world are invited to participate showcasing their technical by developing innovative solutions that create valuable business outcomes based on Cisco technologies.

For Cisco partners in APJC, there’s a greater opportunity to be on the global stage. The winner in each of APJC’s five markets will receive a $50K (USD) prize and be among the finalists in the global challenge with a grand prize of $200K (USD). There’s also a new award category this year, Partnering for Purpose, which recognizes partners’ investments in supporting Cisco’s purpose of powering an inclusive future for all. The purpose-driven category awards up to four $25K (USD) prizes for the top partner submissions aligned to themes such as Digital Inclusion, Employee Experience and Economic Empowerment, Climate Change, and Environmental Stewardship, and Crisis Response and Critical Human Need.

If you need some inspiration, look no further than the APJC winner of the last Global challenge, Velocis, who, in addition to receiving a total of $250K USD of prize money, for their innovative solution, BullsEye, received increased customer demand and created more opportunities, leading to interest from global partners for collaboration.

Also from India is Connectivity Solutions who have created platforms in the past few years, such as Naksh and QUASAR, which offer differentiated market offerings, customer stickiness, and a value-based use case selling approach. These platforms have made a strong impact in the healthcare and access control industries, respectively, with Cisco recognizing their innovation and social impact.

Indonesia’s Mastersystem Sustainability Optimization (MSSO) solution, which has expanded beyond sustainability, and has resulted in ongoing discussions with numerous customers. Mastersystem plans to bundle Cisco software and hardware to make the offering more environmentally aware while delivering the customer needs

Last but not least, we have the back-to-back winners from 2020 and 2021, Outcomex from Australia, who’s TransportDeck technology—created an end-to-end IoT solution that provides customers in the Transport and Mobility industry with real-time visibility and analytics to make informed business decisions, improving accessibility and flow of transport and pedestrian traffic. Outcomex achieved this using Cisco technology like APIs, Meraki cameras, advanced object recognition capabilities, and AI/ML algorithms.

The submission period for the Partner Innovation Challenge is from now until September 15, 2023, at 11:59pm Eastern Time. Partners are encouraged to register and enroll using the Innovation Challenge Form. Our team will be running a series of workshops for registered partners so please reach out to your team to secure your positions. A panel of Cisco business and technical leaders will evaluate all submissions based on Innovation and Creativity, Technical Achievement, Customer Benefit, Market Potential, and Quality and Presentation. Winners will be announced at Partner Summit 2023 in November. For more information

As the world continues to innovate and adapt to new challenges, the Partner Innovation Challenge aims to make an even bigger impact by growing the number of partner submissions, and we at Cisco are excited to see the partners’ incredible ideas and inspiring solutions in this sixth year of the Global Partner Innovation Challenge.