Legacy Cisco Partners Are Interested in the Agent Model

Hogan said multiple traditional Cisco resellers called her when the vendor announced its agent model. These partners were enthused at the opportunity. The existing collaboration partner base numbers more than 3,000, and many of them viewed the agent model as a more profitable and easy way to transact with down-market customers.

She said new Webex business in this new model is “pretty evenly split” between new agent partners and traditional Cisco VARs.

“I think it was a little bit unexpected – the degree of success we would see with the existing VAR community. It wasn’t shareshift. It wasn’t our partner saying, ‘Hey, I’d like to transact this deal that I would have brought to Cisco regardless down this new route,’ but rather, truly net-new customers that these partners were bringing to Cisco saying, ‘Because of this new model, it now makes financial sense for us and makes sense for the sake of simplicity, to go transact with Cisco in this new way,'” Hogan said.