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Cisco Invests in Building a Collaborative Partner Ecosystem for Industry Solutions
New Industry Solutions Partner Network Fosters Partner-to-Partner Collaboration to Address Global Demand for Industry Solutions
| Source: Cisco
DUBLIN, IRELAND--(Marketwire - September 13, 2007) - As part of a continued effort to help build
a collaborative and adaptive channel to accelerate customer and partner
success, Cisco® (NASDAQ : CSCO ) today introduced the Cisco Industry
Solutions Partner Network.
The new Industry Solutions Partner Network will engage, enable and reward a
global community of channel partners, application providers and device
manufacturers to collaborate and deliver industry-specific solutions that
address the business needs of customers. Partners that qualify for this new
program will also be the first to have access to Cisco Partner Space, an
innovative virtual environment that facilitates the partner-to-partner
collaboration required to deliver complete industry solutions.
"We are entering the second phase of the Internet and this will create
unprecedented growth opportunities over the next decade for our channel
partners and customers," said Keith Goodwin, senior vice president of
Worldwide Channels at Cisco. "Companies and governments are looking to
deploy industry solutions to increase collaboration and productivity, while
partners are looking to deliver industry solutions to increase transaction
size and gross margins."
Value of Partner-to-Partner Collaboration
Partner-to-partner collaboration is critical to delivering more valuable
solutions to customers. Digitel Corporation, a Cisco channel partner, and
Cistera Networks Inc.®, a Cisco Unified Communications enterprise
application services provider, were able to provide a complete event
alerting and notification solution for the city of Opelika, Ala. Using this
solution, Opelika city services and emergency personnel can now communicate
with each other seamlessly over the Cisco Unified Communications system,
while digitally recording and archiving each transmission. Emergency
response is faster and more efficient, while post-event analysis is now
possible due to the recording and archiving features.
"Opelika is a community that's proud of our rich heritage, but ready to
embrace the possibilities of technology innovation, especially to enhance
mission-critical services such as public safety," said John Findley,
information technology director with the city of Opelika. "In order to
maintain the most effective and up-to-date departments to serve and protect
our citizens, we turned to trusted Cisco partners Digitel and Cistera to
design and implement a Cisco Unified Communications network for emergency
management and public safety applications."
Program Benefits
The Cisco Industry Solutions Partner Network will support partners by
providing industry training, expertise, industry-specific communications,
and innovative collaboration tools based on Web 2.0 technology, such as
Cisco Partner Space. Cisco will promote the capabilities of the partners in
the network in various ways, and will provide collaborative business
planning, proposal-based joint marketing funds and turn-key demand
generation programs. This will allow partners to quickly engage each other,
expand their geographic reach, and better address the business challenges
of customers. The collaborative delivery of these industry-specific
solutions will be rewarded with product discounts offered through the Cisco
Solution Incentive Program, provided that the Cisco product and services
component accounts for no more than 70 percent of the total solution.
Cisco partners must meet additional requirements, such as having industry
references, an industry-focused business plan and dedicated resources to
participate in the program. Specific program requirements can be found at
http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/sell/industry/ispn/ispn_enroll.html.
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