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Marc Surplus

Vice President, Partner Strategy, Planning & Programs

Global Partner Organization

As Vice President of Strategy, Planning & Programs for Cisco’s Global Partner Organization, Marc Surplus is responsible for developing and executing channel strategies and partner programs across all routes to market in Cisco’s connected partner ecosystem, which accounts for more than 90% of Cisco’s revenue. Surplus and his team are responsible for managing and evolving the extensive portfolio of partner programs and incentives that underpin Cisco’s value based channel model, enabling Cisco’s 60,000+ partners to build new capabilities, accelerate growth, and increase profitability in their Cisco practice.

Previously, Surplus led Strategy & Partner Programs for Cisco’s Americas Partner Organization, which represents Cisco’s largest geographical region (United States, Canada, and Latin America). In this role, he was responsible for designing strategies and partner programs that enabled the region’s 23,000 partners to increase profitability and grow sales across all routes to market.

Surplus has led various sales strategy, planning and operations teams at the US, Americas and worldwide levels. He was a Senior Director in Cisco’s Worldwide Strategy & Planning Organization, responsible for developing and implementing sales acceleration strategies across Cisco’s global field operations. Surplus has also served as Director of Operations for Cisco’s US Enterprise business and led the strategic planning processes for the US & Canada Theatre.

Before joining Cisco, Surplus was CEO of ForwardVue Technologies, a financial risk management software company. He also served as Vice President & General Manager for Trilogy Software, one of the largest privately held enterprise software companies. Earlier in his career, Surplus was an Associate Principal at McKinsey & Company.

Surplus received a Master’s in Business Administration from the Wharton Business School. In addition, he holds a Master of Arts in International Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Miami University of Ohio

Articles

January 27, 2020

PARTNER

Three Reasons to Grow Your Small and Mid-Size Customers with Cisco

Small and Mid-size businesses are investing in digital transformation for the future and represent a significant market opportunity. According to Anurag Agrawal of TechAisle, “Worldwide SMB IT spend is forecast to reach US$700B in 2020, growing at 6% over 2019.” Now, Cisco has three great new reason…

November 20, 2019

PARTNER

Think Small to Grow

If you saw Marc Monday’s blog, Going Big with Small, you’ll know why we at Cisco are dialing up our commitment to the small business segment and why partners are so important to helping small business customers be successful. In his blog, Marc talked about three things partners should know, but here…

November 5, 2019

PARTNER

Have You Found Your Edge?

The theme of Cisco’s annual Partner Summit conference this year is “Own Your Edge.” I am 100% on board with this idea—that each partner brings their own unique abilities, and value to the market, which results in a thriving ecosystem that delivers diverse solutions for customers. We can’t decide you…

October 18, 2019

PARTNER

If You Hate Spoilers, Don’t Read This Blog

Cisco’s Partner Summit is right around the corner, and I’m looking forward to sharing what’s coming in 2020. In the meantime, are you curious about whether we delivered on our commitments at our last Partner Summit? What We Told You: We Will Recognize and Reward New Capabilities What We Did: Our com…

November 14, 2018

PARTNER

Grow Today and Transform for Tomorrow with Cisco Partner Programs

For over 25 years, Cisco has built the most robust, partner-led programs in the industry. Last year at Cisco Partner Summit, we focused on our core programs with simplicity and mutual value exchange. This year, I am excited to announce new changes that are fundamentally evolving our programs to alig…

November 1, 2017

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PARTNER

Accelerating and Rewarding Partner Success with Programs

Own It. That’s the theme for Cisco Partner Summit 2017, and it couldn’t be more apt for the program news we’re sharing at this year’s summit. We’ve been on a listening tour, hearing what partners think we’re doing well and what we could be doing better. And we’re owning that feedback by making it ou…

May 23, 2017

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PARTNER

Introducing Global Gold – A New Partner Certification Tier

Our business is changing. Our customers’ needs are evolving. Companies are more global than ever. The phrase ‘think global, act local’ has never been more relevant. We’ve listened closely and understand that we need to make it easier for our partners to do business with us at a global scale.  Today…