Last week was big for Cisco VARs.  The announcement that Cisco is being added to the Dow (it made its debut Monday) validated Cisco’s financial stability. Then there were plenty of new offers at the Partner Summit in Boston.
 

During the summit Keith Goodwin, senior vice president of worldwide channels, touted a series of pro-VAR moves designed to “take the cost out of doing business with Cisco.”  There are several generous financial incentives.  Paying out $20 million for Core Accelerator rebates sounds especially tantalizing.  But most of all, partners need to know they’ll get credit for opportunities, and that Cisco will resolve bookings tension with the direct force. 

A number of VARs will be thrilled to hear Cisco is instituting “channel bookings neutrality” which allows those direct sales people timely bookings credit regardless of the partner involved.  In addition, to help ride out the tight credit markets,   Cisco is offering 90-day terms for more partners during the next six months.  It’s Cisco’s version of a VAR stimulus package.  

There also are programs to complement the newest portfolio extensions. In concert with Cisco’s push into data center virtualization, there’s a new data center channel solutions program for its data center channel partners. The program extends the value incentive program to all data center technologies. And there’s more-a new authorized partner program for the new C-series Rack-Mount servers. 

But partners, take note! The authorized partner program is not a specialization and does not count toward Cisco certification. So, it looks somewhat experimental at the moment.