Cisco Partner Summit 2016: Cisco DNA
SAN DIEGO — Cisco isn’t viewed as a software and recurring revenue kind of company but that’s the business model shift currently in motion and the one that company executives underscored as they addressed digitization, new technology initiatives and partner opportunities here at Cisco Partner Summit 2016.
A strong example of that is the new Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA) unveiled today. Cisco DNA is an open, extensible, software-driven architecture that will be sold through the Cisco One software model. Cisco also introduced Capital Easy Pay specifically for Cisco DNA.
Cisco DNA is at the heart of the company’s integrated architecture strategy, said Rob Soderbery, senior vice president for enterprise products and solutions at Cisco. And while it might initially be a lot to take in, the good news is that it’s designed to be very consumable and straightforward for customers.
“Cisco is relying on partners to lead the journey,” he said, adding that it’s progressive journey that starts with base automation that can be deployed on the customer’s network today.
How do partners monetize Cisco DNA?
According to Soderbery, there are three big opportunities:
Lead the journey — Given that Cisco DNA represents a big change in networking for customers, partners are positioned to show customers the way. Partners do this by tapping into their traditional business –i.e. advisory services, technical services and reselling — to build out the digital network architecture for the customer.
Managed services — Cisco DNA is an optimal platform for managed services. “What we’re trying to do is abstract the infrastructure so that you can build managed services offers easily and quickly on the networking platforms so you can have more agility, speed, scale, and operational costs for those managed services platforms — really tackling the enterprise managed services problem at scale,” he said.
Software practice expansion — Here the opportunity is to become an independent software vendor or software developer to build out digital applications.
Expect to see Cisco offer partner enablement for Cisco DNA in the upcoming months.