The Forecast for Managed Services: Partly Cloudy

At our recent Partner Summit in San Francisco, the managed services buzz was around cloud-based services. Our partners’ questions were: how will Cisco assist them in developing their own cloud solutions, and what role will Cisco play in enabling them to bring these offers to market? Here are some perspectives.

The short answer is that we will help them with these offers through the combination of support from the Cisco Advanced Services organization as positioned through the Managed Services Channel Program (MSCP).

White Label Opportunities

By its very design, MSCP cares for different partner delivery models. So whether you are a managed service provider with an established cloud offer or a managed services provider selling to the VAR partner community through a “white label” offer—MSCP will provide aligned certification levels that match your go-to-market plan.

Cisco even supports partners through a white label arrangement where selling partners don’t have to make substantial investments in their own network operations centers (NOCs) to provide these solutions to their customer base.  This white label option enables partners to defer large capital investments and move more quickly into adjacent markets by out-tasking the network management or NOC to the white label producer until their skills mature and market demand merits broader direct investment.

Unified Communications as a Service

We also recently announced both Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) designations within MSCP under the Cisco Powered brand. These services will enable partners that have built their cloud solutions on Cisco validated architectures to differentiate themselves in the marketplace with the strong referenceable backing by Cisco.

One of the primary roles in channel programs is to enable partners to provide our products and solutions in the manner customers wish to consume them. And as we begin to witness changes in consumption toward “X as a Service”, we are mindful of creating a program environment that rewards partners that work together while encouraging investment in people, processes, and tools.

Todd Roth is director of worldwide channels strategy at Cisco Systems Inc. Follow Cisco’s own channel blog here. Monthly guest blogs such as this one are part of The VAR Guy’s annual sponsorship.