Cisco Solution Specializations Break New Ground for Partner Differentiation

When customers are deciding which partner to work with, a partner’s specialization is one of the top 3 criteria they use. To demonstrate our partners’ expertise and help customers choose the right partner, we have added a new category of specializations called solution specializations. Where our architecture specializations recognize deep expertise in a technology domain, such as networking or collaboration, solution specializations are laser-focused on specific customer priorities that span architectures, such as hybrid work (from home or office) and securing roaming users through SASE (Secure Access Services Edge) technology, for example.

This week at Partner Summit, we are unveiling three new solution specializations into the portfolio, joining our SASE, Full-Stack Observability (FSO) and the Hybrid Work from Office specializations that were launched in September. These specializations help partners demonstrate their solution expertise using a lightweight format that is tied directly to customer priorities and gives partners more flexibility in how they can achieve recognition in the Cisco Partner Program. All six are available now.

FSO delivers much-needed visibility and analytics about how applications are performing across the complete IT stack. Partners with this specialization can help customers optimize their application performance, provide a superior user experience and deliver on the promise of digital transformation.

Hybrid Work from Office solutions are more important than ever before, as people need to work securely from increasingly diverse locations. This means that partners who are specialized to deliver hybrid work capabilities are more attractive than ever before.

SASE addresses customers’ need to secure the growing universe of roaming users, devices, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps, without adding complexity or reducing end-user performance. With security as a top IT care-about, this solution specialization highlights the value a partner can deliver.

NEW! Hybrid Cloud Computing presents many integration and management challenges. Partners who are Hybrid Cloud Computing specialized help customers unravel the intricacies of porting data and resources into a more seamless environment.

NEW! Hybrid Cloud Networking specialization recognizes partners that securely and efficiently connect and manage customers’ data, workloads, and applications across data centers, edge and multiple clouds.

NEW! Hybrid Cloud Software specialization assures customers that a partner can unify their IT across on-premise, cloud-based and SAAS applications to streamline and simplify operations.

Solution specializations mark a new era in our approach to specialization design while providing partners with a more flexible pathway to Gold, Premier or Select Integrator status. At the same time that we are providing a stronger value exchange, we are removing role-sharing restrictions and making superior enablement available at a drastically lower cost by leveraging Cisco Black Belt Learning Maps.

Solution specializations recognize not only the knowledge that a partner has about a solution, but also the proven experience they have successfully implementing the solution. This dual requirement is exactly what customers are looking for when choosing the right partner to solve their business challenges.

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