‘When you look at the traditional Splunk platform and the Cisco security portfolio, and then you look at the networking infrastructure portfolio, partners who really spend the time to understand all of that will have a very unique differentiation in bringing all that together for a customer and helping them realize the benefits that we saw when we bought Splunk. That’s the big holy grail over the next months and quarters, and I think that’s going to be a real opportunity for our partners,’ Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said in an exclusive interview with CRN at Partner Summit 2024.

Chuck Robbins is closing in on a decade as the leader of Cisco, and the executive is no stranger to driving the company through a handful of technology and business transformations.

The networking giant is currently undergoing a major shift away from primarily selling networking hardware in favor of AI-driven networking and security services and software and it needs its partners — through which the company does about 90 percent of its business — to come along. With that in mind, Cisco announced a massive partner program renovation in the form of Cisco 360, a brand-new partner program that will launch in 15 months that reflects a total change in how the company will incentivize, compensate, and go to market with its partners. This is all happening at the same time that Cisco is also digesting its massive $28 billion acquisition of Splunk and making leadership changes in the form of adding former Splunk CEO Gary Steele to its executive leadership team as president of go-to-market and tasking former security and collaboration business leader Jeetu Patel with taking on the networking business as well as the company’s first chief product officer.

Robbins sat down with CRN at Cisco Partner Summit 2024 this week in Los Angeles to talk though some of the monumental changes the company is making on its transformation journey, how partners can cash in on a unified networking and security portfolio, now with Splunk, the reinvigorated AI-powered data center opportunity, and what the channel can expect from Cisco heading into 2025.

Here’s what Robbins had to say.

Why was now the right time for a brand-new partner program?

I think that, first of all, Rodney [Clark] (pictured) is so helpful because he’s got a fresh set of eyes. He doesn’t have a lot of historical perspectives at Cisco of: “Well, you can’t do that because something will break,” which I thought was very helpful. I think the reality is, the technology transitions that have occurred, and the AI transition makes it a good time to actually make a change. I think that recognizing the criticality of this technology to our customers and really shifting our program to reflect the criticality of all the technologies and what our customers are trying to do going forward. And I think one of the biggest things — and we’ve always tried to do this — is making sure that our field sales teams and our partner programs, how we compensate our field sales teams, and how we think about our partners, that they’re very aligned, so they create synergy with our teams in the field. I think that’s the number one design factor.

[Clark] came in and just saw that he felt like [the partner program] needed to change. I have for many years been saying there’s got to be something we should be thinking about doing differently, because nothing stands that test of time for 20 years. So, I think that what he’s doing is well thought out. I’ve said this forever to partners: Whenever we make these kinds of changes, there’ll be things we do really well, and there’ll be things we miss, and we’ll adapt. But I really think the most important thing is to make sure our field sales teams and our partners are chasing the same stuff, and they’re and they’re compensated similarly.

Are you expecting more partners to become MSSPs?

The reality of our customer base is that they are under immense pressure to achieve the benefit that the technology affords, particularly with AI. And so, I think that naturally leads them to say: “First and foremost, I don’t want to be a systems integrator across different technology stacks. I want to buy technology in a way that I can consume it quickly and I can get to the outcome quickly.” So, one way of doing that is to buy a managed service across these different technology areas. I think that will lend itself, probably over time, to customers consuming more of it in that fashion. But I think the primary objective is getting to the business value as quickly as possible.

What should partners be doing to make a smooth transition to the new program?

I think, first of all, we’re giving them 15 months. I was a little concerned about [Clark] presenting it so early, but I think the reality is you have to. I think we gave enough detail to where partners understand directionally where we’re going so they can begin to adapt. I’d like to think that it’s not revolutionary relative to what it’s asking our partners to do. [Cisco 360] is really changing the way we structure the incentive program and the specializations, etc., to reflect the importance of the technology to the customers today and in alignment with what we’re asking our sales teams to do and so I actually don’t think that it’s going to be a monumental lift for many of them. I think it has the potential to really have partners that have not focused on our security portfolio in a long time, to double down on our security portfolio, to revisit it, really recognize the innovation that the team’s been building and probably recognize the value that it has and … try to represent it in the market with us more than they might have done in the past. That’s what our intent is.

What’s your message to the traditional Cisco VAR partner as the new partner program is introduced?

Love them. Infrastructure is really re-accelerating right now. You think about what Jeetu [Patel, EVP and chief product officer] talked about [at Partner Summit] with the AI-ready data center, and what customers are trying to do to prepare for these applications that are coming, and then the future-proof workplace, which is a combination of being prepared for edge-based inferencing applications as an example, or the getting employees back in the office, or in continuing to operate in a way that supports employees working in multiple different modes and the security associated with it. I think that those partners that have always just helped customers design and implement their infrastructure, whether it’s security infrastructure, whether it’s network infrastructure, or emerging combinations of both for AI readiness, I think there’s a great opportunity for them and a great future, and probably a renewed excitement about infrastructure.

With Splunk’s Gary Steele (pictured) joining the company and Jeetu Patel taking over Cisco’s networking business, is this new leadership a sign of Cisco changing direction?

I was asked [this week] about the perception that we’re moving faster than we have in the past, and I think it’s fundamentally because we have a team that has an immense sense of urgency and a desire to win and a desire to help our customers, and we understand that our customers are going to need to move fast, and the markets are moving fast, and so we really have no other choice. I felt like Gary [Steele’s], seniority, his experience, his pragmatism, and when you think about getting back to the basics of really selling core infrastructure, he has made that a number one priority. His real objective is: “How do we help our partners and our Cisco sales teams? Let’s take the noise out of the system so they can be in front of customers more effectively with the right technical resources to help our customers move as fast as possible in this environment.

From a product perspective, we really need to ensure that we are building the cross-portfolio integrations in ways that only we can do. And I think that Jeetu [Patel] has proven himself over and over again with collaboration and security. I think watching him on stage [this week], it’s pretty clear that in 90 days, he’s getting a real grasp on the networking side as well. And I think you can see a meaningful shift in how we talked about the technology today, and moving at the pace that our customers really need us to move in order to help them achieve what they need to achieve. And again, technologies like these AI pods, customers just want to get to the deployment of the application. They don’t want to spend a year integrating different hardware vendors, like: “I need a GPU vendor and a storage vendor.” [It’s about] bringing it all together so you can actually deploy it quickly is what is super important to our customers.

Is it safe to say Cisco is moving faster with AI than it did in the past with cloud?

I’ve been very blunt about cloud over the years, and I think that not only did we not move fast, we actually weren’t sure of our role at the time and I think in this case, it’s just so different. Jeetu [Patel] talked about the differentiators in the stack that we have, all the way from the silicon — which obviously is at the heart of the systems that we’re selling to hyperscalers and will be at the heart of the systems we sell to the enterprise as well — all the way up through the systems and the security needed and the software needed. I think we are well prepared and we understand what our customers need. We understand our role. We’re in a good place relative to delivering on those technologies. And I think we have a very clear strategy. That’s the feedback I got from the partners and the analysts this week, is that they feel like we have a very clear strategy and we’re moving quickly against this AI opportunity.

Cisco recently put out a survey that [said] 98 percent of enterprises want to urgently deploy AI, but only 15 percent are ready, representing a big opportunity for partners. Where do partners start with these customers?

I think the big thing is, partners need to be able to explain to customers what are some general use cases that we’re seeing happening. So first of all, you need to be able to reference what we’re seeing around the industry with other customers. But I also believe that most of these customers, the fact that 98 percent of them have a sense of urgency; they realize the outcomes that they want to deliver. I think the basic gist of the survey says hey, we know where we want to go. We know where the applications are that we want to deploy. We understand what the real use cases are where we believe we can derive benefit. What they’re lacking is: how do I get from here to there? That’s a lot of what we announced [this week], a lot of what we’re going to be announcing over the coming two to three months, some of it we’ve already pre-announced and it’ll be shipping in the next few months. I think for partners to get a grip on a real understanding of how they can deploy this technology to help our customers bridge that gap from I’m here today, and I know where I want to get to, but I’m not sure how to get there. I think that’s huge. That’s just the classic; it doesn’t get any better for partners. The customers are saying I need help right here.

Given Cisco’s data center AI announcement from the show, is that a signal that Cisco is still very much in the networking space?

We’re kind of in the networking space [laughs]. We’ve taken over a billion dollars of orders in networking infrastructure from the hyperscalers, we have a real robust solution that includes our native networking with our native networking with our native silicon, and these solutions that we’re delivering for the enterprise around AI. Even the technology [we shared at Partner Summit] with Wi-Fi 7 and with Spaces technology, and all the things that we can do that that is unique to Cisco. So, I think it’s pretty clear that we were definitely the same leader we always have been.

And with AI, it’s actually re-accelerating the focus on private data centers, because I think a lot of customers are quite clear and understand that that the foundational models are going to run in the major cloud providers. I think many of them are going to decide that their own proprietary data that’s their intellectual property, they want to do training in their own private data centers for that piece, and then they’ll do inferencing against both what they learn from their custom models on their proprietary information, as well as making calls to the foundational models to actually combine that information to actually get to meaningful recommendations or AI-generated data that will that will help them engage with their customers more effectively, or whatever it is. So, we continuously to see strength in private data center build-out.

With Splunk now part of Cisco, what’s the end game with XDR and how can partners take advantage of that unified portfolio?

I think that if you just zoom out on Splunk and the SIEM platform, there are massive amounts of information that we see and our customers see that are being generated from our technology infrastructure. So with XDR, as we continue to integrate more sources of threat intelligence into that platform, then those that are high fidelity; we can actually put into Splunk so that you’re not overloading it, much like the Talos information we have, but you’re getting relevant information into Splunk so that you can then apply AI and actually correlate different pieces of information about what’s going on the infrastructure. That’s a services-heavy implementation for our customers, and partners have a huge role to play there. I think when you look at the traditional Splunk Platform and the Cisco security portfolio, and then you look at the networking infrastructure portfolio, partners who really spend the time to understand all of that will have a very unique differentiation in bringing all that together for a customer and helping them realize the benefits that we saw when we bought Splunk. That’s the big holy grail over the next months and quarters, and I think that’s going to be a real opportunity for our partners.

What can partners expect in terms of field support and support from Cisco in 2025?

What I’ve seen our teams do over the last 12 to 15 months, I think, is the business units have doubled down on their engagement in the field because of so many of these new emerging technologies that we’re delivering out there. If you look at the security [business unit] as an example, they’re spending so much time with customers helping them understand XDR. And I think we were at [more than] 650 customers on XDR as of the end of July. You need to have the people that build the product engage [with partners and customers]. You heard Tom Gillis [SVP and general manager, Security Business Group at Partner Summit] talking about the white glove treatment around Hypershield. We need to make sure those customers really get that right, and we get that right for those customers. In many of those cases, when we do that, we actually engage very much with both the Cisco field team and the partner field teams, and that’s actually something I encourage our business units to do because what that then does is creates a multiplier and a scaling effect, because the partners learn from the business units and from those engagements, and then they can take those learnings and go to the next customer and just continue to be more effective. So, you’re going to see us do more and more of that. I think you’ll continue to see our business units being super active, especially on some of these newer technologies, and with all this AI infrastructure that we’re going to be deploying, I think you should expect there’ll be a lot of support from the from the product teams for our partners out on the field.

What is the message that you want partners to take away from Partner Summit 2024?

Excitement! I think they should be really excited about all the opportunities that exist, and the pace of innovation that the teams are driving right now is pretty high. Jeetu [Patel] joked about me pushing him on tempo. He’s not someone who needs to be pushed, but I find it a lot of fun to actually have him all excited about how fast we’re moving, and then I just tell him to move faster.