As Cisco plans to make its extended detection and response (XDR) offering generally available later this year, the vendor is making changes to other parts of its cybersecurity portfolio to give Cisco channel partners more incentives and value.

Cisco XDR, recently unveiled at the RSA Conference, hits the mainstream in July. But in the meantime, Cisco has launched upfront discounts for partners that sell Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense, Cisco Umbrella Secure Internet Gateway (SIG) and Duo multifactor authentication and single sign-on in a single offer. That “Security Step-Up” promotion gives “highly aggressive” incentives to partners.

At the same time, Cisco is coming off two years that featured a flurry of new partnerships on its collaboration side. Those alliances spanned all across the channel ecosystem. They include a technology partnership with Microsoft to integrate Teams Rooms with Webex video devices, new relationships with agent-focused technology services distributors for UCaaS and more recently CCaaS, and agreements with service providers to migrate hosted voice users to Webex Cloud.

(Above: Our James Anderson speaks with Cisco’s Alexandra Zagury on Channel Futures TV at the 2023 Channel Partners Conference & Expo.)

In other news, Cisco earlier this month gave partners and customers a new financing option to help them through difficult economic conditions where immediate cash may be sparse.

Channel Futures spoke to Shawn Yuskaitis, Cisco’s security director for global partner and routes-to-market sales, and Kristyn Hogan, Cisco’s vice president of global collaboration partner sales, about how the vendor is going to market with Cisco channel partners in the areas of cybersecurity and collaboration, respectfully. See the slideshow above for all of the channel news coming out of the Cisco camp.