Cisco 360: Redefining Partner Growth for the Next Era - Six Five On The Road

How is Cisco’s new 360 Partner Program setting the stage for the next era of collaboration, innovation, and growth in the channel ecosystem?

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From Cisco’s Partner Summit 2025, host Daniel Newman is joined by Cisco's SVP, Global Partner Sales, Tim Coogan, for a conversation on Cisco 360: Redefining Partner Growth for the Next Era. They dissect how Cisco's upcoming 360 Partner Program is designed to build a more predictable, transparent, and profitable partner ecosystem by focusing on measurable results and sustained collaboration.

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Key Takeaways Include:

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• Cisco 360, debuting in early 2026, is a necessary strategic overhaul transforming the partner model with an emphasis on transparency and mutual growth.

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• Partners should expect more measurable engagement leading directly to improved profitability and a deeper day-to-day business integration with Cisco.

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• The shift to a broader platform approach empowers partners to build and deliver integrated solutions faster with greater adaptability across the Cisco technology stack.

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• Partners must act now by focusing on developing platform-based offerings and aligning processes to maximize the opportunities Cisco 360 presents.

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Daniel Newman: Six Five is On The Road here at Cisco Partner Summit 2025 in beautiful sunny San Diego, California. Where else would it be? Excited to have this conversation today we're going to be talking a little bit about partners. I know it's actually unique these days that I didn't say AI, that's just how things seem to roll. But it's been a great event here so far and we are going to be joined by Tim Coogan. Tim is the newly appointed 80 some odd days. I'll let him share more with you in the job as senior vice president and leader of the entire partner business for Cisco. Tim, welcome to the show.

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Tim Coogan: Great, thank you Daniel, appreciate it.

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Daniel Newman: So talking a little bit about, you know, the event and you and I backstage before we got on here and I was saying, so how long have you been here? You've been in channels and partners? You told me no. Yeah, but you've been working in and around partners for 20 some 26 years.

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Tim Coogan: Almost 26 years.

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Daniel Newman: Give me the brunt of what you've been doing at Cisco. What led you to this role of leading global partners?

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Tim Coogan: You know, and it's a question I get quite a bit that I don't come from a traditional partner background, but I believe that anybody that works at Cisco really works with partners, whether you're directly in the partner org or whether you're in field sales or architectures or even in our back office. So at some 83, 84 days I've sort of lost track of the number of days as the leader of the partner org. But in my 26 years with Cisco, I don't know that a day went by that I didn't work with a partner. And so I think it gives me a perspective on what works and really kind of what doesn't. And I think that what doesn't is really a powerful way to bring a unique perspective to this role.

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Daniel Newman: One of the things I think most observers of Cisco like us as analysts, that we really understand well, Tim, is that partners are a big part of your world. No matter how much Cisco's built that kind of go to market team that works directly with customers, it always comes back to that collaboration with the partners. And I think that's giving you just an enormous scale. I think you, you showed some. Was it 500,000 strong?

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Tim Coogan: 500,000. I think Oliver had it at 500,000. 129 to be precise.

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Daniel Newman: Yeah, that's a big salesforce.

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Tim Coogan: It's a big salesforce, one of the largest in the world.

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Daniel Newman: You also launched the Cisco 360 partner program here. Maybe some of the people watching this are here. Maybe some of them weren't for the first timers. Give us a little bit more about the program and sort of how it represents the next wave for Cisco and its partner ecosystem.

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Tim Coogan: Yeah. So the Cisco 360 partner program, I think playing into that, you know, mobilizing and really utilizing that big external sales force that comes to us from our partners, the market has dictated the speed of change, has dictated that we go to market differently. And to do that, we want to reward partners for their investment in their ability to deliver innovation on this portfolio. And so, you know, Cisco, we could argue that our job is to sell, but we really believe that our job is to create, create both the products and the platform that our partners can then take to market. And so to do that the right way, you've got to incent them, I think, differently. And so we're looking at deep architectural expertise, but also portfolio expertise. And the Cisco 360 Partner Program rewards both of those approaches.

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Daniel Newman: Yeah. So for those that have been in the program and they're seeing change.

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Tim Coogan: Right.

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Daniel Newman: New face. Of course, with a new face comes probably some new team members as well. And of course, these partners are so deeply entrenched. I've been around the Cisco ecosystem for a long, long time. And I mean, these partners, they pride themselves. I'm a gold partner. So they make a lot of the decisions on how they build and run their companies based on this program. So give me the breakdown, a little bit of how this is gonna feel different for those partners that are so close?

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Tim Coogan: Yeah, Daniel, that's actually a great question, and it's one that we've asked ourselves a great deal. And so I'll say this. So the new program isn't even live yet. And so Elizabeth did a great job talking about that. We launched this, the intent to launch a year ago with a 15 month head start to make sure that our partners had the time that they needed so that they didn't leave investments stranded. And so we're super proud of our Vit program. It’s 23 years old. It's in its 46th iteration. It's the richest one ever. And so while we look at this as a new program, we also look at it as modernizing the old program. So modernizing VIP to address the needs of the market today. And again, that's that cross architectural approach, because in the old gold certification, which we were really proud of, you can become gold by selling a lot of one thing to truly take advantage of Cisco 360, you can be an expert in one technology, or you can make the investment to be an expert in the portfolio and receive benefits, you know, kind of in relation to your investment.

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Daniel Newman: Yeah. So these partners, though, are also in the middle of, like, a massive flux.

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Tim Coogan: Yes.

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Daniel Newman: Those that came up selling hardware routers, you know, switch components, security. Built around a lot of Cisco, I'm sure other technology partners, they're feeling the shift right now, just as Cisco is. You know, I am kind of curious. Your portfolio is expanding. A lot of new focus on security. You did the Splunk acquisition. You did a lot of observability. Of course, you're now getting more into compute edge, bringing that back into play even more. And then, of course, the core networking portfolio. Like, how are you seeing the partner ecosystem? You mentioned the word innovation a couple of different times. How are you seeing them build? Because you give them new things. It's like, hey, here's your bag of toys, and you're at the beach. Build a sandcastle. What are you seeing all this turn into?

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Tim Coogan: So, Daniel, I think you nailed it, and I think you nailed something that's even a bigger issue. We're not the only ones coming with a new bag of toys to the beach. You know, our partners do incredible things. You know, they're an incredible value add to our end users because they do represent the industry as a whole. And so we recognize that some of our competitors in the industry are changing their rebate and incentive programs. They're launching new technologies, and it's a lot for our partners. And so we're trying to streamline their ability to absorb by using artificial intelligence to streamline enablement for our partners. Because it's almost impossible for a Cisco person to know everything we sell, let alone a partner to know everything that we sell, plus three or four or five other vendors. I mean, it is a. It's a tall task. I joke with people. The Cisco that I joined 26 years ago sold two things, routers and switches. We weren't even in the wireless business yet. We didn't have IP telephony. We didn't have Cloud and AI. And it took me 26 years to get comfortable with this portfolio. We're asking some partners to comprehend it on a much, much quicker time frame. And the other thing I say is change is hard, and we love that. People love the gold certification, but we want to try to show them the path towards increased profitability with the new program.

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Daniel Newman: Let's dive in just a little bit. On that. So, like, you were out on the commercial team, you were on the enterprise team. You know, I spent some time here with Jeetu Patel, your president, Chief Product Officer. He's giving that bag of new toys to, to. To the team. Like, are your partners, are you seeing them build and innovate? Do you have any, like, you know, from that being out in the field, examples of kind of how that's materializing? Are they pivoting their businesses to more software subscription services? We know you are.

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Tim Coogan: Yeah.

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Daniel Newman: Like, is that, is that happening? Is it happening fast enough?

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Tim Coogan: Well, I don't know that it ever, it could ever happen fast enough because, you know, one of the catchphrases that we've been using is that we're asking partners to sell solutions that didn't exist, exist three months ago to solve problems that nobody knew we had six months ago. And you know, and you mentioned G2. G2 is an innovation engine, and his ability and his vision to bring new products to market with he and the team is amazing. But it does put a burden on our partners. And so I think we're seeing the market dictate the need to move quickly, but I do think we need to be sensitive to make sure that we're supporting our partners in the right way. So again, we look at it as that innovation portfolio that really only comes to life if our partners understand the portfolio and then how it turns into business value and customer outcomes.

Daniel Newman: Yeah, I've always thought that the channel is great for fulfillment. It's great for selling and creating revenue at the same time. I've noticed over the years, and like I said, this is me putting my analyst hat on that. You see, in this era of hyperscaler versus MSP versus implement or integrate it versus enterprises, like, the enterprises move a little slower, small businesses move a little slower. And so you've got this kind of, you know, mandate almost from the street.

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Tim Coogan: Right.

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Daniel Newman: Cisco, we need you to show that you're big in AI. You're breaking the break in security and helping, you know, companies move fast. At the same time, your partners kind of want to move it. Sometimes it feels, you know, I don't want to use the word slower or gradual, but like, it does almost feel like you have to kind of have a push and pull between, like, jamming all this innovation at them and at the same time being kind of cognizant that their customers might not be moving at the pace of what Cisco is trying to move, which isn't moving necessarily, maybe at the pace that the largest hyperscaler or ChatGPT and OpenAI are trying to move, but it's all happening.

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Tim Coogan: Yeah, our partners have a really tough job because while innovating and building new products is not easy, building it is one thing. Finding the right vehicle and the right avenue to introduce it and show value to a customer does require a little bit more time. And our partners are kind of at that inflection point of all the creativity that goes into building new products. But then they've got to find a way to make a material impact and show how that becomes a solution. So it's a tough gig.

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Daniel Newman: Yeah, it really is. But the nice thing, I think, for the partners out there is that enterprise AI is very early compared to, you know, compared to, like, what we kind of see with consumer stuff. Like, when you're seeing, like, consumer applications, people see chatbots and they're like, oh, you know, look how far along we are. We're in the seventh inning of AI. It's like, you know, I talked to one CEO of a different tech company, but I won't call him out, but I'll call it the quote. He said something like, AI says 1% of enterprise AI. So it was like this stat. So whether it's a few percent or wherever, very little of enterprise AI has really proliferated into the enterprise even less, probably in a small business outside of, like, the, oh, I use ChatGPT or, oh, I use Gemini to do things. And that's a start. That's a start.

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Tim Coogan: It's a start.

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Daniel Newman: So let's talk about, like, the partners themselves and getting to grow, because I think that's the other thing is, like, look, you want to add more partners, right? But you also want all your partners to be doing more business. With Cisco, you also mentioned they have other companies bringing them other tools. So how do you sort of help them get that predictable path to growth? Like, what does that look like in practice?

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Tim Coogan: Yeah, I think it's a kind of a twofold question. It's. We have to provide our partners training in the same timeframe with the same quality that we provided to our own people. And I think that's something that we're really trying to do a much better job of. You know, we can't launch a product, inform our teams, and then tell our partners two or three months later. We're really looking to enable them in real time, just like we would our own internal field, Salesforce. Because I think that time to market is so absolutely critical. I think, you know, leveraging the tools that are at our disposal to make implementation easier. The way we're integrating AI into some of our services capabilities and then providing that to our partners, I think is really unique in terms of us doing it together. We don't want to do things to our partners, we want to do things with our partners. And I think that's maybe a fundamental difference because Cisco is, I think you very well know some. Some 90% of our revenue gets delivered through our partner ecosystem. And we remain steadfastly committed to embracing their desire to grow sustainably over time. And I think to do that, we've got to treat them like a natural extension of Cisco, not as something that just comes after Cisco.

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Daniel Newman: It's gotta be hard to do just with the pace.

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Tim Coogan: It's hard.

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Daniel Newman: The pace is like we're trying to roll something out and then we want to get it scaled out to all the partners. And the partners are trying to digest the fire hose that's coming at them. I mean, it sounds ambitious. You know, what's the metric?  What's the, like, one or two metrics that will be like, this has been a success for partner360?  

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Tim Coogan: And for your next year, I'm gonna. Kind of give you two. One is not possible to measure. The one is very easy to measure. The one that you can't measure is trust. We know that if we do the things that are right for our partners, that they know that we're doing things with positive intent and really looking out for their best interest. That's a measure that we've always been very proud of. Do our partners trust us? And that's why we ask them, when we survey partners, that's kind of the lifeblood of our relationship with the partner ecosystem. The second one is this concept of durable growth. We're really pounding on our own teams to understand what durable growth really means. Consistent, predictable, ahead of the market and profitable. You know, to grow without profit doesn't make sense. To be profitable without growth doesn't make sense. And so we want to treat our partners in very much the same way we treat our own company and provide that platform to do all of those things that lead to durable growth. So I think trust and growth are the two things.

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Daniel Newman: All right, well, let's do a little real time coaching for the partners that are out there. If they're watching this, they're sitting there listening to our conversation, they're hearing you're trying to build trust, you're trying to give them more real time access to the tools and to the Sandbox, you're trying to give them more toys to play with. What should they be doing to get ready though? I mean what should they be doing to prepare? What can they do? Because it is two ways and you obviously want to do more and be the best, most trusted partner. But to some extent they're going to have to put some investment, some effort into what are you looking for from the partners?

Tim Coogan: Yeah, so our program is designed, I think you really just captured it beautifully. The idea of our program is to align investment with rewards. And so what we want to do is we want the partners to know if I have questions, if I don't know what I should be doing to maximize the return on my investment. In Cisco, you work with your partner account teams. We've got, we've set up our PXP platform which is a one stop shop for our partners to be able to understand where their partner value index is, where their CPI indicator shows them what the modeling looks like for rebates and incentives. So the bottom line is if they're not 100% sure all of Cisco exists to help them understand the roadmap and where they should be investing.

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Daniel Newman: It seems like a moderate and very achievable ask.

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Tim Coogan: It is, I hope so anyway.

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Daniel Newman: And of course hopefully in the end the partners. Right. You kind of touched me. But like if they're making more money, if their business is succeeding, if they're able to deliver satisfactory outcomes and hopefully great outcomes to their customers. Because again all these partners that you have are basically trying to equip the businesses of the future with the tools and technology they need to be successful.

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Tim Coogan: Yeah. You know, and I've said this a bunch of times both in my old jobs, you know, when I worked with partners, you know, from, as a field seller and then obviously in this job leading our partner organization, our partners don't work for us, they don't owe us anything. We owe them the opportunity to work together for mutual benefit. And sometimes people shy away from saying that I want to make a partner more profitable. I don't shy away from that. I think that profitable partners find a way to sell more, they find a way to invest more. And I think that ultimately benefits our customers to a great degree because you know, a partner who doesn't make any money and an OEM who doesn't make any money doesn't deliver value to the end user. And I think that if we're cognizant of doing things the right way, enriching the engagement we have with each other, it leads to good things for us, but it also leads to good things for our customers. And I'm not shy about talking about that.

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Daniel Newman: Well, if you want to understand the behavior, just look at the incentive.

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Tim Coogan: Yeah, exactly. 100%.

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Daniel Newman: Absolutely. Tim Coogan, I just want to thank you so much for joining me here on The Six Five.

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Tim Coogan: Oh, it's totally my pleasure, Daniel.

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Daniel Newman: I love it. Keep tracking what you're up to.

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Tim Coogan: Enjoyed it very much.

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Daniel Newman: And thank you, everybody, for being part of this Six Five On the Road. We're here at Cisco Partner Summit 2025 in San Diego, California. You might see the sun shining off my big, beautiful, bald head. Subscribe, be part of our community. We appreciate you tuning in, but for this episode, I got to say goodbye. See you all.

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