Holding a conference in a brewery may entice partners to attend, but it is also destined to attract jokes about organising events in breweries ­ something most vendors would surely look to avoid.

Networking giant Cisco decided to take the risk and use the Guinness Brewery in Dublin to unveil its partner collaboration platform, its latest attack on the SME market and the tools it will use to almost double revenues to become a $50bn (£24.9bn) company. In its last financial year, the company reported $34.9bn.

Edison Peres, vice president of advanced and core technologies for worldwide channels, kicked off the conference with an overview of the networking market. He said there are three major events happening in technology: the empowered user, real-time information and the borderless enterprise.

“In business, this is all moving towards collaboration and a Web 2.0 reality. We are coming up to the collaboration world where partners will need new skills.”

It is this collaboration that Cisco hopes to hone in on with its latest Industry Solution Partner Network programme (ISPN). The programme encourages resellers to partner with ISVs to deliver tailored offerings for vertical sectors. Andrew Sage, senior director of worldwide channel markets at Cisco, said the programme will be made up of four components.

The first element is solutions that are industry relevant and repeatable. These will have technical guidance, including for products outside of Cisco with which VARs integrate. Secondly, Cisco will help to enable partners through training, sales and marketing. And thirdly, engaging with partners through business planning and demand generation.

Finally, the ISPN programme will have incentives and rewards for VARs and ISVs for pre-qualified industry solutions.

To enable resellers and ISVs to come together, Cisco unveiled a Second Life-type virtual platform, which contains a virtual exhibition hall where ISVs can set up virtual booths. VARs can then visit a booth and learn more about the ISV. The platform also includes a lounge where partners can hold meetings.
The entire platform is designed to be interactive, so partners can chat together, according to Sage.
“We have created this platform, and now we want to step back and see how partners collaborate on it.”

Keith Humphreys, principal analyst at EuroLan, said partner-to-partner collaboration is extremely important. “SAP, IBM and Microsoft are already encouraging their partners to do this, so it is good that one of the major hardware vendors is now doing this too.”

However, he said a virtual platform may not be the best way for Cisco to help its partners team up. “Cisco should just put more resources into partner teaming in real life. Why do you need an avatar-type thing to do something you could do yourself?” he said.

Tom Kelly, UK managing director at Cisco Gold partner Logicalis, said: “I think this is a good idea because it is a bit different. At the moment, I don’t believe Cisco or any other vendor has grasped how to make money out of Second Life or virtual platforms. This will at least bring people together and help them generate ideas in a creative environment.”

Cisco is betting on this collaboration to help it target seven chosen vertical sectors: education, government, healthcare, retail, finance, manufacturing and real estate.

Cisco also revealed aggressive growth targets for its SME partners. The vendor is looking to sign an additional 5,000 partners and intends to double worldwide spend on partner-enablement, as revealed by CRN last week.

Thierry Drilhon, vice president of European channels at Cisco, said: “With SME Select [a level of Cisco’s partner programme] we are accelerating our partner recruitment and want to speed up their learning, so we are investing in training.”

Drilhon said Cisco, alongside every other technology company, has a huge challenge because of the skills shortage that is besieging the technology sector. “In Europe we will be short of half a million people skilled in networking. Cisco is aiming to address this gap because it doesn’t matter if we release a new product every day; if there is no one there to implement it to the end user, then it doesn’t make much sense.”

To fill this skills gap, Cisco has launched its Partner Talent initiative. The vendor has put more than two million people through its Networking Academies, according to Celia Harper-Guerra, senior director of worldwide channels and former HR director.

“We are now not just looking to train people in our sector, but we are looking at people in other sectors, such as mortgage companies, after the recent turmoil, and the army. We will retrain them and get them back into the workforce,” she said.

She added that Cisco will focus on recruitment of people, development of people, staff retention and its talent portal.

Humphreys said the vendor had done a good job in spotting the skills gap early. “Cisco saw the gap back in 2000, so it started its Academies. Getting enough talented people is a major partner bugbear, so saying it will pass on CVs and help partners to recruit is a good move.”

Kelly added: “As a business we all need to invest in people, to keep on top of staffing levels, keep our people interested and bring new people on board with good training and skills.”

Cisco poised to invest in channel