Cisco 25th Annual Partner Summit starts this week

The FINANCIAL — Cisco’s 25th annual Partner Summit commences this week, bringing together 11,000 partners from 152 countries. For the first time, the company’s flagship partner event is fully digital, making it available to an even wider audience.

Starting on Wednesday, the event will help its partners become “Future Ready”. Over two days, Cisco’s leadership team will address how partners can help their customers better adapt to business disruptions, accelerate their digital journey and cloud adoption, and transform their operating model with automated platforms. Cisco partners will gain the business and technology insights they need to perform and transform – now and in the future.

As one of the first companies to embrace a channel-led model, partners continue to be Cisco’s primary route to market. Today, Cisco’s channel ecosystem is one of the largest and most diverse in the IT industry with more than 60,000 partners delivering localized innovation to customers worldwide. In fact, nearly 90% of the company’s revenue flows through its partners.

Global Insight Session: Hosted by Chuck Robbins, chairman, and chief executive officer, Oliver Tuszik, senior vice president, global partner organization, and Gerri Elliott, executive vice president, and chief sales and marketing officer, the keynotes will outline the company’s strategy to build an inclusive future for all. Maria Martinez, Liz Centoni, Todd Nightingale, and Jeetu Patel will also explain how Cisco is evolving its business to drive customer and partner success.

Innovation Talks: These 15-minute sessions will educate partners about product roadmaps, new features, and upcoming innovations. They will cover technologies ranging from collaboration, security and cloud, to 5G, intent-based networking and IoT.

Business Impact Sessions: These 30-minutes breakouts will inform and accelerate partner practices. They cover market segments and partner initiatives, such as small business, partner programs, SaaS, software adoption, developer skills and managed services.

Geo Sessions: Each region will hold a breakout so that local leadership can share insight on opportunities that exist in their respective markets. These discussions will also dive into regional market transitions and business drivers to help Cisco partners prioritize and prepare for the year ahead.