After 15 months of preparations and an $80 million investment, Cisco has replaced its old VIP partner program with a new Cisco 360 Partner Program that aims to make it easier for partners to navigate the program, work with customers and increase their revenue and business opportunities.
The new Cisco 360 Partner Program was unveiled recently after the company collected broad feedback from partners that were involved in the company’s previous Cisco Value Incentive Program (VIP) partner program. Cisco had
announced in November of 2024 that it would replace the old VIP program with the new 360 Partner Program to streamline its partner relationships and channel operations. The 360 Partner Program is built for MSPs, resellers, developers, consultants, and other partner businesses.
“The Cisco 360 Partner Program builds on 20-plus years of industry-leading partnerships and was co-designed with partners to help accelerate their profitability, provide predictability, and deliver growth through greater customer value,”
Elisabeth De Dobbeleer, senior vice president of Cisco’s 360 Partner Program, told ChannelE2E.
Many of the partner program changes are also inspired by new technologies, said De Dobbeleer. “Product launches happen faster than ever. Partner customers are asking about technologies that did not exist six months ago. That pace is not slowing down, it is our new reality. These [program] changes are designed for simplicity and to make the experience even easier. “
Here are the Cisco 360 Partner Program Details
Among the Cisco 360 Partner Program updates are new rebates, a distributor development fund that will focus on partner growth, and Partner Value Indexes that will add provide various partner segments, including developers/advisors, mass-scale Infrastructure and distributors, with custom learning paths and opportunities to increase their value and profitability, according to Cisco.
Other partner program updates include temporary new Cisco Partner Incentive (CPI) bonuses that aim to increase partner earnings through the company’s One Cisco offerings, including new Secure Networking and Secure AI Infrastructure specializations. These temporary bonuses will expire at the end of July 2026.
An enhanced Cisco AI Assistant is also available for the company’s Partner Experience Platform (PXP) that is designed to help partners deliver more value to customers.
For customers, the new partner program includes a new Cisco Partner Locator tool to help them find the right Cisco partner to help them with a range of services, including security, networking, collaboration, Splunk and cloud and AI Infrastructure.
New partner tiers are also set up under the new program. All participants in the program are recognized as registered Cisco Partners, while Cisco Portfolio Partners are participants with existing sales and technical expertise, mature business operations and strong commitments to customers. Preferred Partners provide advanced technical skills with robust lifecycle and adoption practices and proven capabilities to deliver products and services to customers.
“We have broadened our recognition of partners’ sales growth and added it as a new measurement criteria,” said De Dobbeleer. “We are balancing that sales focus, with an enhanced spotlight on the value partners deliver via actual customer engagements. We are emphasizing capability depth in each portfolio, as that leads to capability breadth aligned to the opportunities we see in the market.”
Beneficial Changes for MSPs
For MSPs, the program was redesigned to give them more opportunities, said De Dobbeleer.
“Rather than a separate [group] as it was before, MSPs are now fully integrated in the Cisco 360 Partner program,” she said. “We have evolved our program to recognize and incentivize all partners in the ecosystem.”
Previously, the old VIP partner program rewarded volume sales in one product area. The new partner program takes a broader approach, she said, allowing partners to get rewards for having deep architectural expertise in one area or portfolio experience across multiple areas.
“MSPs can choose the path that fits their business strategy,” said De Dobbeleer.
Ultimately, the new program is designed to help partners boost their skills, sales, revenue and customer bases, she said.
“If a partner was successful in VIP from our previous program and invested in Cisco capabilities, that partner will be successful in the Cisco 360 Partner Program,” said De Dobbeleer. “The difference with Cisco 360 is better tools, better training, and better alignment with how managed services businesses actually make money. ”
