Cisco empowers IT & OT partners to create and grow their IoT business

Going into Cisco Partner Summit, one thing’s for certain: IoT offers a great opportunity for partners to build profitable, growing practices. Customers are realizing improved efficiencies, reduced costs, downtime and improved safety from their IoT deployments.  And partners are playing a big part in customer success. In fact, partners have been instrumental in scaling Cisco IoT to serve 67,000 businesses around the world. Cisco success is based on our market leading IoT portfolio with compliance across industries, deep knowledge of Cyber Security, and trust globally customers place in Cisco. To accelerate IoT market, we are bringing a range of new partner programs, training and design capabilities for the IoT partner eco-system.

Success in IoT requires a diverse partner eco-system

The IoT market requires collaboration across the partner ecosystem, with each partner bringing the right technology or expertise to successfully deliver outcomes for each target industry. The breadth of partners engaged in Industrial IoT range from channel partners, system integrators, ISVs, cloud partners, to equipment builders. Customers also need integration and channel partners to help create, install and maintain these IoT solutions.

Cisco is known for our relationships with IT partners. We have a full range of programs to help grow their businesses. These include the Cisco IoT Authorization Program and the Cisco IoT Essentials training program that help our IT partners succeed with our IoT product portfolio.   Our IT partners like Presidio, Dimension Data and Axians are extending their practices to serve the extended enterprise – securely connect assets and manage the flow of data from the IoT edge to the enterprise applications.

Cisco has also been working, for many years, with the operational technology (OT) partners as well. These are the industrial ecosystem of machine builders and industrial control system vendors that integrate Cisco IoT technologies into their products or solutions and across the full range of industries like Manufacturing, Transportation, Oil & Gas, Utilities.  Industrial channel partners, like INS, a pioneer in distributing industrial networking to the operational technology (OT) buyers, have developed Cisco practices to serve Manufacturing and Oil & Gas customers

Cybersecurity requires IT and OT collaboration

As more and more devices, machines and assets are connected to enterprise networks, cybersecurity is top-of-mind for all customers. This is creating a net-new opportunity for our IT and integration partners to extend their practices and begin to work closely with their OT counterparts.

As the security and networking market leader, Cisco IoT’s product portfolio includes a comprehensive cybersecurity offering that provides deep insights, anomaly detection and segmentation to protect industrial environments.  Our IT partners are creating practices and delivering security solutions to customers across the globe.

“For our major automotive client, Cybersecurity is a key requirement for any solution on the plant floor. We have worked with Cisco IoT to create a customized solution to deliver a world-class cybersecurity solution. The Catalyst IE 3400H switch delivered an elevated level of technical capability for a world-class secure manufacturing environment allowing us to win plant refresh opportunity,” says Jason Dendler, Global Client Executive at NTT (formerly Dimension Data).

“Security is the top concern for most of our customers, we have extensively used Cisco’s broad portfolio of networking and security products in our practice,” says Juan Lopez, CTO for Axians France. “We were working with Sentryo prior to Cisco’s acquisition and are excited to accelerate our Cybersecurity operational technologies (OT) practice with the entire Cisco IoT portfolio. We now assist our customers’ IT and OT departments to collaborate to protect industrial control systems across a range of industries.”

Taking IoT success to the next level

To ensure the continued success of all our IoT partners, I am pleased to announce a suite of new programs, incentives, and training.  They are designed to empower our partners to better serve their customers.

Introducing Cisco IoT Design-In Program – a NEW partner program for integrators, machine builders, industrial control system vendors

For years we have been helping integrators, machine builders, and industrial control system vendors provide integrated solutions. They are connecting and digitizing their products to enable new business models and revenue streams. They have been taking Cisco off-the-shelf industrial switches, routers, access points and integrating them as a part of their larger solution. But because every use case is different, the integration process can be long and difficult.

To simplify the process, Cisco is introducing the Cisco IoT Design-In Program. It is the industry’s first-ever systematic industrial networking program. The program authorizes these partners to resell Cisco IoT products. But more importantly, it includes tools and resources that speed IoT integrations by using known commonalities to enable repeatable solutions that scale. Design-In standardizes, simplifies, and accelerates integrations and is reinforced by decades of Cisco’s experience in working with these integrations. It speeds time to market, improves profitability and increases reliability through pre-integrated and validated designs, development and integration enablement services, and Cisco product and marketing support. Learn all the details of this program here.

New advanced partner training for better customer support

To ensure customer success, we believe in making sure our customers have knowledgeable pre- and post-sales support. Last year, we introduced Partner IoT Essentials training. Since then, we have trained over 2500 partner sellers on IoT, and over 153 partner firms have been certified. In January 2020, we will launch an extension to the training program, called IoT Advantage. Partners who complete this advanced course will be able to accelerate their practices by focusing on proven use cases with ROIs to address customer needs. They will learn how our tools and technology, including industrial cybersecurity and edge compute, can help them profitably deliver these services. IoT Advantage training is available for IoT Essentials certified partner sellers and technical staff to ramp up their skills.

Improved partner profitability to sell our portfolio

We are continuing to streamline ordering and access to our IoT portfolio of products. IoT IGNITE is a new program that offers additional discounts to Cisco IoT Authorized Partners and Cisco Partners, allowing them to take advantage of the most comprehensive industrial networking portfolio in the business to improve profitability.

To recap, IoT presents a significant opportunity for our customers to drive efficiencies, improve customer experiences and revenue through the digitization of their businesses. It also provides a huge opportunity for our partners to create new revenue streams with connected devices services and value-added support. And most importantly cybersecurity is a catalyst for IT to engage deeper with OT in the ongoing IT and OT collaboration quest.

I look forward to talking more about the IoT product portfolio, programs, training and other resources at Cisco Partner Summit next week. To learn more about Cisco IoT go to www.cisco.com/go/iot. If you have large opportunity that you would like to discuss with us you can reach us at ask-iot-bd@cisco.com.