The Power of AI, New Products, and Partner Excellence

Did you attend or tune-in to WebexOne last week?  I hope you are as excited as I am about the innovation taking place. An even more powerful and comprehensive technology platform at the core of our business fuels our channel strategy and provides partners with differentiated collaboration experiences to deliver to customers.

Here are a few key takeaways from last week

• Groundbreaking AI and hybrid work announcements! 

We have been innovating with AI for several years, bringing language intelligence, audio intelligence and video intelligence to our product suite. Last week we took AI leadership in collaboration to a new level by announcing our plans to make AI pervasive across the entire platform with real-time media models, the new Webex AI Assistant, Webex AI Codex, and Super Resolution. We have truly reimagined and reinvented our portfolio to be AI-enabled, making Webex smarter, more efficient, and easier to use in every way.

• New products and amazing features across the portfolio.

To help customer reimagine workspaces our device portfolio has been enhanced with Cisco Room kit EQX, a dual-screen room experience creating an effortless way to deploy virtually, in-person experiences in flagship spaces, and the Bang & Olufsen Cisco 950, a new premium wireless ear bud solution to complement our already extensive headset portfolio. There are also twenty new feature enhancements to reimagine work with Webex Suite, eighteen new Contact Center and CPaaS features announcements to reimagine customer experiences, and security and manageability features to help customer reimagine IT. For the full rundown and details check the Salesconnect Launch and Events page.

• Our partners are AWESOME!

The depth and support of our channel community was on full display with over 550 partners attending in-person and 4200 tuning-in virtually. I had the opportunity to engage with many of our partners during 1:1 meetings and dedicated partner sessions and the feedback was amazing. We also hosted an award session to recognize a few of the most innovative Collaboration partners through our Webex Partner Awards. Check out the 2023 award categories and please join me in congratulating the winners.

Our channel strategy is built around our best in the world Webex platform, and we are intently focused on driving simplicity, profitability, and earning your mindshare. There is so much progress being made in these areas, I want to highlight a few key updates that will get you excited for Q2 and our next event, Partner Summit.

Simplicity through Wholesale:

Our Wholesale offer is built to easily integrate Webex Calling into Partner-led managed services, by leveraging the market power of Cisco’s providers around the world. The partner feedback has been amazing, and interest continues to build due to the flexibility, predictable pricing, and frictionless growth that the Wholesale offer delivers. It enables a wide variety of partner types to create use cases addressing a wide range of customer segments and verticals. If you are looking for a winning collaboration engine to accelerate your managed services collaboration practice, you need to learn more!

Profitability with LCI 2.0

Lifecycle Incentives 2.0 was just launched! This is a major evolution of our incentives portfolio which rewards partners for focusing on software and recurring revenue streams. LCI 2.0 is now completely telemetry-based, allowing partners to focus on what really matters, which is working with customers and not submitting claims. Webex Contact Center is one of three Collaboration use cases launching and will revolutionize Cisco Collaboration incentives.

Mindshare through enablement:

We know that announcing new features, offers and programs of this magnitude is only the first step. To earn your mindshare, we need to train and enable your teams. As you experienced with FY23 Partner Sales Kickoff our channel teams are hard at work bringing together the programs, resources, tools for your success. It does not stop there. Be sure to stay plugged in to Partner Readiness page on Salesconnect and attend our weekly regional enablement sessions to keep you in the know.

There is so much to be excited about and we are going to tie it all together at Cisco Partner Summit 2023!

If you are joining us in-person in Miami Beach, do not miss our Business Impact Session where Javed Khan, and Brett Harrison, and I will discuss the latest technology announcements, channel enablement strategy, and profitability programs. Plus, we will be joined by Eileen Collins, the first-ever female pilot to command a space shuttle mission!

Add this session to your agenda today!
BIS11 – Cisco Collaboration Session: The Rocket Fuel for Growth
Wednesday, November 8th
2:00 – 2:45pmET

Cannot wait to see you there!

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