A day in the life [of a partner], Avi Networks

Business challenges come in all shapes and sizes, just like the partners that make up our partner ecosystem.

Our partners come from a vast range of expertise areas – spanning virtually every vertical and industry around the globe. By working with our partners, we’re able to provide tailored solutions that address not only specific hardware and software needs, but also the financial acquisition and consumption of those products to create a personalized, flexible plan for every type of challenge and budget. (You can read more about partners and ecosystem partners here.)

Avi Networks is an excellent example of an ecosystem partner. We’ve worked with Avi Networks for years, helping organizations automate application delivery, scale their IT infrastructure, and meet the increasing demands of the digital world. In order to illustrate our relationship with ecosystem partners like Avi Networks and what this relationship brings for our customers, we wanted to paint a portrait of the real-time process starting with the customer challenge and ending with a tailored solution coming from the partnership between Cisco Capital and the ecosystem partner.

For the sake of protecting sensitive customer information, we’re going to keep the end customer information private, but imagine a large technology company with customers around the world, struggling to keep up with the accelerating pace of technological innovation and growing customer demand.

08:00 AM – It starts with the customer

Avi Networks and the Cisco team receives an email; the customer needs help preparing for a forecasted demand spike.

The customer is preparing for a massive consumer campaign launch centered around one of North America’s biggest sporting events. The customer expects the marketing campaign to drive a demand spike in their online e-commerce store, and subsequently they want to prepare by making sure their technological infrastructure can properly balance the load and influx of new customers to ensure a smooth, seamless buying process. Ideally, the customer wants a long-term solution to meet what will hopefully be a long-term demand increase.

09:00 AM – Avi Networks makes the first steps toward a solution

Many organizations struggle with load balancing and demand spikes. Creating an efficient technological backbone for managing these spikes is crucial for any business that relies on digital infrastructure like data centers, for example.

During their internal meeting, the Avi Networks team outlines a solution leading with a next generation ADC that provides a flexible, analytics-driven, application services fabric. Avi’s software-defined architecture delivers application services including load balancing, WAF, and visibility to application performance as a centrally managed pool of services. This elastic, highly automated approach is very interesting to the customer since it overcomes many of the challenges with their appliance-based load balancers.

Next step? Loop in Cisco Capital to figure out the best way for the customer to acquire and consume the product.

11:00 AM – Tailoring the solution

Avi Networksand Cisco Capital hop on a call to chat through the customer’s specific challenges, and what exactly the customer wants to solve under their given timeline and budget constraints.

The customer wants a solution that lasts, and a large consideration in lasting solutions is the ability to avoid technological obsolescence.

Pairing Avi Networks solutions with Cisco Easy Pay, the customer can get the technology they need at 0% interest for three years. At the end of the term, the customer can return, refresh or purchase the hardware for 10% of the original purchase price.

As Cisco’s partner, Avi Networks provides the elastic load-balancing solution to meet the potential demand spike, and Easy Pay creates a cash-saving solution for maintaining and eventually replacing the technology. Case closed. Or is it?

12:00 PM – Lunch

Because lunch is important, after all.

1:00 PM – An update from the customer

An urgent email arrives in the inbox of Avi Networks – the initial forecast wasn’t as accurate as initially predicted, so the customer wants to address the potential variable traffic. Would it be too much to ask for a more flexible consumption model? Additionally, the timeline has shortened, and multiple changes in the marketing campaign have bled budgets dry.

Given the high-investment campaign launching on the horizon, the timeline is short and the money is running out. The customer needs to save as much cash as possible while deploying the solution as quickly as possible.

Just as the ink began to dry, the team makes a quick trip back to the drawing board.

2:00 PM – Another call with Cisco Capital

Cisco has seen many organizations struggle with outright ownership and the unpredictable nature of both traffic and capacity. It’s a pervasive, industry-wide challenge for any organization working with digital platforms and technology.

To help organizations address this capacity issue, Cisco Capital developed Open Pay, a flexible utility-likeconsumption model that allows customers to pay as they consume the product, freeing up cash and tailoring the solution around the needs of the business.

Cisco Open Pay is a consumption-based payment solution that enables customers to pay for Cisco technologies as they use them, including data center compute and storage. Dial capacity up or down as needed, and better align future payments to actual usage.

3:00 PM – The team returns to the customer with a revamped solution

Avi Networksand Cisco Capital respond to the customer’s urgent email with an urgent solution, taking their budget and timeline needs into consideration with a tailored package that marries the best possible technological solution to a financial strategy tailored directly to the budgetary needs of the customer.

4:00 PM – Crisis averted

The customer confirms that the solution fits the challenge.

While discussing the solution over a call, the customer explains the amount of pressure their IT department faces against the aggressive time to market and pressure to reduce cost. Amidst automation, self-service tools, and public clouds, they’re on a mission to rollout software and hardware at an accelerating pace, so the elasticity in this Open Pay-backed solution is critical for successful business outcomes.

5:00 PM – It ends (and starts again) with the customer

While this is the first step in an ongoing relationship between Avi Networks, Cisco Capital, and the customer, the personalized nature of the relationship creates a higher level of efficiency through regular check-ins to manage and adjust technology needs.

As the customer’s needs change over time, Cisco Capital and Avi Networks can fine-tune the package as necessary. Whether it’s aligning payment and consumption models to cash-flow fluctuations, or replacing hardware as it becomes obsolete, the newfound partnership stems from a solution woven into the fabric of the customer’s business.

Not bad for a day’s work.

Want to learn more about Cisco Capital and our ecosystem partners?

Cisco Capital Payment Solutions: Click here to learn more about flexible payment solutions to accelerate and scale your business.

Ecosystem Partner Program: Find the perfect ecosystem partner to solve your business challenges here.