Cisco and Microsoft Promote Data Center and Cloud Arenas to Partners

Rivals Cisco and Microsoft have reiterated their commitment to invest in a joint channel program which seeks to assist their partner communities go to market with integrated Microsoft and Cisco solutions.

For the last 10 months, the program has been running in pilot mode, and is aimed at partners of both Cisco and Microsoft in data center and cloud markets. The director of Partner Solutions, Worldwide Channels at Cisco, Brian Allison, stated that the collaboration between Cisco and Microsoft partners will be promoted, and training courses will also be provided on bundled Cisco-Microsoft solutions, like Cisco's Unified Data Center architecture, which has Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V and Systems Center 2012.

According to Allison, a select group of Cisco and Microsoft partners had been chosen in order to push the collaboration and partner-to-partner connections forward, meaning those between different solution provider organizations.

Allison said: "Sometimes -- and this is a big thing that we are seeing -- it's not all under one roof. We are seeing more and more partner-to-partner activity, and that's one of the things I get really excited about. What Cisco and Microsoft can really uniquely drive is the partner-to-partner aspect of this."

In order to drive collaboration between solution providers, regardless of whether or not they are in the same organization, focus needs to be placed on the value proposition that combined Microsoft-Cisco data center solutions are able to distribute to end clients.

Allison added: "Getting these practices -- a Microsoft practice and a Cisco practice -- to work together, even if they are under the same roof, it takes some time. In many ways, like the transitions we are navigating with customers, our partners sometimes need to go through that same transition in terms of breaking down silos and getting their functional organizations to work in order to deliver the most compelling value proposition to the customer."

It is also possible for some merged Microsoft-Cisco solutions partners to take to market at present, and these include Cisco's FlexPod with Microsoft Private Cloud, or a reference architecture integrating Cisco server and networking, NetApp storage and Microsoft's Windows Server 2012 Hyper V. The Nexus 1000V Switch for Windows Server Hyper-V, and EMC's VSPEX with Microsoft Private Cloud are further examples.

Further collaboration between Cisco and Microsoft partners is now more relevant than before, and this is particularly due to the convergence which is happening between software and networking or infrastructure worlds.

Allison said: "On the application side, more and more customers are wanting to understand how they can have an agile infrastructure that meets their business needs. And, more and more, IT needs to be able to communicate how the solution they've come up with is relevant to the application people. It's about bridging those conversations, and how we are doing that is Microsoft and Cisco coming together."

The training resources are useful to both technical and pre- and post-sales teams with partners' organizations. These resources are made available via various mediums, such as hands-on labs, on-site trainings and webinars. Allison said: "We found that one size does not fit all when it comes to enablement."

Cisco's goal will be to scale out and formalize the pilot program, according to Allison. He said: "That is my hope and my expectation. We are seeing some very, very promising requests and opportunities with the partners to really take things to the next level and we are actively working on doing that."

The number of partners who have taken part in the pilot program were not mentioned by Allison, but they include Dimension Data and Softchoice.

The vice president of Converged Infrastructure at solution provider and Cisco Gold Partner Long View Systems, Kent MacDonald, noted that he is happy to witness the Cisco-Microsoft collaboration.

MacDonald said: "We have been active with the Cisco/Microsoft partnership, which has gotten traction earlier this year. We have seen some early traction in the midmarket, predominantly with FlexPod deployments, and anticipate this will be an area of growth. [It's] great to see the continued and evolving investment and collaboration between Cisco and Microsoft in the data center/converged infrastructure market." (CY) Link