Apparently, Cisco North America Channel Chief Jim Sherriff is hiding out on an exclusive North South Carolina island this week. Time for a little rest and relaxation -- and maybe even a Corona with The VAR Guy? Hardly. The gathering, which includes some of Cisco's top partners, could set the stage for Cisco's updated commercial and SMB strategy later this month, The VAR Guy hears.

The VAR Guy

September 13, 2010

cisco_smb_strategy

Apparently, Cisco North America Channel Chief Jim Sherriff is hiding out on an exclusive North South Carolina island this week. Time for a little rest and relaxation — and maybe even a Corona with The VAR Guy? Hardly. The gathering, which includes some of Cisco’s top partners, could set the stage for Cisco’s updated commercial and SMB strategy later this month, The VAR Guy hears. Here are some details and plenty of speculation.

Sherriff, you’ll recall, was named U.S. and Canada Channel Chief in July 2010. By August 2010, Sherriff in this FastChat video told The VAR Guy that SMB was among his top three channel priorities:

Next Moves

So, when will those SMB and commercial moves debut? The VAR Guy’s best guess: Within the next few weeks. Apparently, Cisco is meeting with some of its top partners this week to use them as a sounding board for the various channel ideas. Among the potential priorities: Ensuring Cisco’s commercial and SMB go-to-market includes traditional VARs as well as partners that are developing recurring revenue models and cloud collaboration models, The VAR Guy hears.

Also of note: Several of Cisco’s top SMB and commercial executives are helping to plan Tech Data Cisco Ignite, a conference for roughly 100 channel partners (San Diego, Sept. 28-30). The VAR Guy has a hunch that the Ignite event will include more details about Cisco’s SMB Push.

Where exactly is Cisco heading in the commercial and SMB space? The VAR Guy plans to attach a GPS onto Cisco’s Andrew Sage and Dave O’Callaghan to help track down the answers…

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