DEEP DIVE: Everything Aussie partners need to know about the new Cisco 360 program

Rodney Hamill tells CRN Australia how the new Cisco 360 program is “just the beginning” for partners and the networking vendor.

It’s been 15 long months, but Cisco’s brand new partner program, Cisco 360 is officially live.

As the market has changed, so too has the networking company. With a slew of acquisitions including Splunk in 2024, the company is no longer just a hub for selling routers and phones.

It has become an organisation transformed to fit into the AI era. To reflect the company’s evolution, the partner program had to change.

This change wasn’t a simple flick of the switch, it was a long haul, co-collaboration project between Cisco and its partners across the world.

The new program was introduced to partners in October 2024, a purposeful move to get their full thoughts and critiques around the program to ensure Cisco 360 was built by the vendor and moulded by the partner.

And on Monday, Cisco officially cut the ribbon for its new program.

This new program eliminates the illustrious Gold Partner badge; brings in a new Partner Value Index (PVI) to measure a partner’s expertise; a new Cisco Partner Incentive (CPI), removing the iconic VIP rebate program; and also launches a handful of AI-powered tools for partners.

For this month’s CRN Deep Dive, we sat down exclusively with Rodney Hamill, managing director, partner and routes to market sales, ANZ, Cisco to understand what the new Cisco 360 program means for Australian partners.

He told CRN Australia, the past year and a bit has been the busiest period Hamill and his team have ever had in their professional lives.

“It's almost like we've been running hard for 15 months, so we've hit the finish line, but it's just the beginning,” he explained.

“It's a mixture of relief and excitement. We've made it. We've done it. We're in a really good position, and now [we have] excitement that we're going to go live.

“We've got a lot of work to do in terms of updating the market, continuing to evolve the program. It's just the beginning.”

Read the full interview with Hamill and CRN Australia below.

CRN: How will the new Cisco 360 program impact Aussie partners?

Rodney Hamill: It's going to have a good impact, and particularly because it's not a one size fits all approach that we've taken here. We do have respect for different partners size, different markets they operate in. We can factor in where the partner skills are because the partner program under Cisco 360 has shifted towards looking at what's the value and investment.

The plan under the new program is looking at the investment plus the expertise equals incentives. The previous program paid on how much you sold, regardless of your investment or your expertise, you got paid for what you sold.

Now we still want partners to sell a lot, we still want to reward them for selling. But bringing in that extra dimension of investment and expertise will basically help the partners build out more capability and open more market opportunity for them.

CRN: How will partners make money off this program? You mentioned investment plus expertise equals incentives. But what are the other avenues?

Hamill: What we’re doing under the new program is launching specialisations. The first one that we've launched is secure networking. We announced at Cisco Partner Summit in November last year.

Partners who strive to get to that preferred category, as an example in both security and networking, we will give them a designation to go for a specialisation as a secure networking partner. That will give them added incentives when they cross sell those two architectures together. Partners who sell more of the portfolio and more breadth of the portfolio, will have access to increased incentives.

The other thing that the program will do is make our partners more sticky with their customers. If they're truly thinking about the full customer lifecycle and the delivering value all the way through, there should be more opportunities for them to build off that opportunity base.

Historically, we've had a lot of a lot of projects that have landed and delivered, then the partner goes and finds the next project to land and deliver. That's why we've incented them for a long time. We'll still incentivise them to do that, but we'll now incentivise them to be engaged under a longer time.

It should give the customers some sense of certainty that the partner they're working with is truly looking at the outcome and the lifecycle their entire business.

CRN: You’re helping partners to be more long-term focused on this new program?

Hamill: Yes, to help them focus on delivering the business outcome our customers need.

There's a lot of change happening in the market. If I look at why we've landed where we're landed, I kind of pin it back to two main things that are happening inside Cisco and in the market.

What we've been doing under the leadership of Jeetu Patel as the chief product officer for the entire business, we're really bringing together and unifying our platform. The One Cisco story is resonating with customers, they're starting to see the value in that and they’re understanding it.

We've got this big shift towards a more platform-based approach, a more holistic view of what needs to be delivered, and that's a shift from Cisco 10 years ago, where we had pretty much an architecture view of networking, collaboration, security.

“No one is exempt from the impact of AI on the industry”

This all very much comes together under a One Cisco view.

We need to reward partners for selling that cross-architecture sale. That's what we're looking to do with this new program. Then also to make sure that the benefits are being realised for our customers under that approach.

The other thing that's happening in market is AI is in every conversation, and it's transforming every single industry. No one is exempt from the impact of AI on the industry.

That's going to only accelerate your market. We need to have a program that makes sure that our partners are delivering to our customers technology that's covering more of their needs. Delivering the outcomes they need with all the challenges coming towards them from AI.

CRN: How has AI been used in this new Cisco 360 program?

Hamill: AI is pervasive, pretty much in everything. It's not only in the program, we'll have AI systems to support our partners in terms of running the program.

The AI tools to help them understand and maximise the program themselves. There will be AI tools in what we deliver, in terms of helping them sell. There will be AI tools in how they deliver and run environments.

CRN: In the new Cisco 360 program, will there be incentives for partners that use AI or embed AI in their customer’s ecosystems?

Hamill: Not at the moment for specific AI based incentives. We do have a measure in one of the scores, which is cloud and AI, which is one of our PVI scores.

There is a measure of what is the partner doing in that AI space. The more they're doing in that space, the higher they can score in that particular measure.

But no specific payment for AI today, I’m not saying it is not coming so watch this space, but we will make announcements in that in that area shortly.

CRN: When would we see something in the AI incentive space?

Hamill: I haven't seen anything in terms of any of the detail yet. The plan is to bring out more specialisations. We will bring other specialisations, which will gradually come out over time. We've got a few big drops coming this year, we've got Cisco Live in EMEA and we've got Cisco Live in the US.

There will be things coming quickly.

Most of the focus now has been getting our partners fully prepared for the transition. Let's make sure we've built the core of the program as best as we can.

Take all that partner feedback in, making sure they're ready to deploy it, making sure they're ready to execute on that.

That's why I say it's just the beginning, because it feels like it's the end, but it's just the beginning. There will be other things coming out to that will respond to the market to help them drive outcomes and receive more incentives.

CRN: With removing the Gold Partner status, how was the partner feedback on that decision, was it positive or negative?

Hamill: It was both. Partners who were newly minted Gold said, ‘What's changing? We just got Gold, and now it's changing’.

Other partners were looking at Gold and thinking, “I'm a big, mature Gold partner, and now there's a lot more Gold partners in market. How do I distinguish the value?’

We had different types of Gold. We had Gold that were based on systems integration measures, we had Gold partners that were Gold providers, MSPs, as an example.

The customer didn't really understand the different flavours of Gold, other than you were Gold.

I haven't personally had any feedback for people are violently opposed. Just people saying, ‘I've got concerns, because I've just got to Gold. How does a new program accommodate for me?’.

CRN: What was it like having the partners feedback on the new Cisco 360 program?

Hamill: It was good. Some partners were very invested; I wouldn't say that all partners were constantly engaged in the cycle. We had a handful of partners that were across the entire thing.

Some partners would check in at points in time to give us feedback, to look at things that they were looking to get that level of comfort, that it is heading the right direction. Then once they got that level of comfort, they would step back out and just let it run its course.

It gave us a lot more insight to our partners business, to where they want to go, what they're trying to do. Cisco's building a program now that is effectively going to take support for decades to come, and it'll evolve like all good programs do.

It won't be static, we'll evolve this over time.

The alternative was we launch a program, we didn't engage them, and it just came out, and then we dealt with it after the fact. Having that co-creation piece gave us some insight to what our partners wanted to do and what they wanted to achieve, and where they want to take their business.

“Collectively, our ecosystem had so much knowledge built up over decades”

Some partners were on the fence around needing a lifecycle practice. They maybe hadn't made the decision to go down that path. But when we launched a new program and said ‘this is where we're going’, they can then look at their business plan to say, it makes sense.

It's not just for us, the industry is looking at lifecycle. We were probably the catalyst for some of these partners that think more broadly about their lifecycle approach.

CRN: Was there anything that surprised you about the partner’s input?

Hamill: The biggest thing that surprised me was the level of detail that the partners have on the program that's [ended].

The institutional knowledge our partners had on our program blew me away. I knew they knew a lot about the program, but when you sat down with them and they were picking out minute details, it was quite surprising for me to how invested they were in it.

This made our life easy when we moved to the new program, because we weren't tripping up over ourselves when we're about to go live. Collectively, our ecosystem had so much knowledge built up over decades.

CRN: What is something that you’re proud of in terms of this program rollout?

Hamill: The biggest thing I'm proud of is my team. We've taken on the biggest change in Cisco's history of its partner program in in Australia, we haven't had any real big blow ups.

There's been a lot of discussions, a lot of input, but the team have embraced their partners. They've got the partners on board.

I think that knowledge is power when it comes to these transitions, and the team have been very transparent with their partners. When we knew things, the partners knew things.

By being really active and keeping partners aware of what was happening, the team have been very good.

The other thing too, there's been a long relationship with our partners for many years. Some are decades long, and the strength of those partnerships that we've built, you don't think about it at a point in time like we probably took them all for granted.

But when it comes to having to have a sit down with a partner and explain to them that how we reward incentives. Having those relationships was key to make it a sure success.

CRN: What do you hope to achieve during the first 12 months of the new Cisco 360 program?

Hamill: My hope is that when I get to Partner Summit, and I've got 60 to 70 very happy partners who have lent in heavily to the program, who have built out new capabilities or found new opportunities in market.

They have built out lifecycle and CX practices, enhanced their managed services, and are truly delivering that One Cisco value in market.

I hope that over the next 12 months we maintain the level of transparency we've had in the 15 months leading up to this. It hasn't stopped; this is the beginning.

We start the clock on Monday with partners thinking ‘Cisco, we've got the input’, and we continue to have that relationship and get that input going forward, because we don't want the input to stop.

“I want that constant feedback to come in”

We're not going to be able to throw more in the market together if we're not understanding where we all stand. I want that constant feedback to come in.

Good news is, Australian partners aren't particularly shy, they're happy to tell us exactly what they're thinking.

But I want to keep that up. I don't want to take that for granted. I want to make sure that we keep that level of dialogue open. We keep that transparency open with them.

CRN: What message would you like to tell your Aussie partners?

Hamill: Talk to us. We're open. We've done a co-design for 15 plus months. We feel we landed in a good spot. Feedback has been taken on board, and we're at the beginning of a long journey.

This program is going to be our base for years to come. We need to, we need to constantly work with our partners to make sure they understand the program, they're adjusting to the program.

We don't know what technology is going to come down the path. We've built a program that, in three or four years time, major technology shifts, it's agile enough to be able to respond to it.

We continue to be on our journey with our partners, and we want them to be engaged, open, and helping us figure out how we're going to grow in the market.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.