It was great to see many of you at Cisco Partner Summit 2023 and to have many others experience the Partner Summit Digital broadcast. The content from the main stage keynotes and breakout sessions… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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It was great to see many of you at Cisco Partner Summit 2023 and to have many others experience the Partner Summit Digital broadcast. The content from the main stage keynotes and breakout sessions can be found at the Cisco Partner Launch Experience. As we move into 2024, we want to help you get even more out of your Cisco practice and drive key business outcomes for your customers.

Within our evolution of the Cisco Partner Experience Platform (PXP), we aspire to provide you with an industry-leading partner relationship management (PRM) experience—shaped with your input and aligned to our shared strategic growth priorities and go-to-market strategy. Since introducing PXP Practice Maturity last year, we have expanded predictive insights (AI/ML) and Cisco IP to offer you guided experiences so you can differentiate, grow your business, and increase your profitability. At Cisco Partner Summit 2023, this evolution included the launch of new capabilities that support your ability to:

Capture automated insights into whitespace: you now have visibility into the percentage of wallet share of your customer’s install base across architectures, highlighting prime targets to consider for expansion and Enterprise Agreements (EAs).
Cross-sell and upsell opportunities with Growth Finder: creating Powerful insights on recurring revenue, like where to consolidate a la carte software to EAs. And there are also opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell, focusing on security but covering all Cisco solution platforms.
Optimize your profitability by identifying missed incentive rebates: with Cisco Services Partner Program (CSPP) missed rebate insights, you can see what you’re leaving on the table with CSPP rebates versus top-performing peers. At the same time, VIP Optimizer helps you see and model product mix targets to optimize your incentives.
Boost your customer software adoption and increase productivity through Cisco Partner Journeys: focused on Marketing, Co-Sell, Managed Services, Meraki, and more! Use Cisco Partner Journeys to cut through the complexity with step-by-step guides to achieve business outcomes!

Cisco is always seeking ways to automate how we offer information that integrates with how you conduct business, and we encourage you to visit the Cisco Automation and Digitization (CAD) Hub to identify which APIs and XML-integrated solutions will help streamline your business.

Ongoing education is also crucial for many roles within your business. Erik Stunes, our leader for Partner Enablement, had these observations regarding Cisco Black Belt Academy:

Black Belt continues to be recognized as the brand and place for Partner enablement by Partner executives and Cisco leadership. Most partners told us they strongly focus on driving security and leveraging Black Belt training for their teams. Partners were also very excited about our available APIs to connect their LMS and our gamification vision and implementation. In 2024, we will continue focusing on areas you have prioritized. And top of the list is more interactive and hands-on training for your teams and to see gamification as a key step in a new and enhanced learning experience. We will continue to develop all three stages for all personas in Black Belt and evolve new ways to engage your teams.

We continue to invest in areas like PXP and Cisco Black Belt Academy to help you drive and accelerate profitable growth while delivering on our commitment to simplify your experience. As we head into the second half of Cisco’s fiscal 2024, we will continue to co-develop new capabilities with your success and profitability at the center of all we do!

Enjoy the holidays; we will see you in the new year!

Discover more about PXP and managing your

Black Belt learning paths through SalesConnect

We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with #CiscoPartners on social!

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  As we move into 2024, we want to help you get even more out of your Cisco practice and drive key business outcomes for your customers. Within our evolution of the Cisco Partner Experience Platform (PXP), we aspire to provide you with an industry-leading partner relationship management (PRM) experience—shaped with your input and aligned to our shared strategic growth priorities and go-to-market strategy.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

2023 has been an incredible year for Cisco Security and I am thrilled at the opportunity ahead with our partners to carry this momentum into 2024. To end the year on a high note, it brings me great… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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2023 has been an incredible year for Cisco Security and I am thrilled at the opportunity ahead with our partners to carry this momentum into 2024. To end the year on a high note, it brings me great joy to share a recent recognition with our channel community.

In case you did not hear CRN has recognized Cisco Secure Firewall 4200 series as the Product of the Year in the Network Security category. Yes, you read that correctly—Cisco Secure Firewall 4200 series recognized as one of CRN’s Products of the Year! For any remaining skeptics out there in the channel, this award is a further proof point to our commitment of quality and innovation in Cisco Secure Firewalls.

“The Product of the Year awards honor leading IT products and services that represent the most cutting-edge technologies in the channel today. Recipients of this year’s Products of the Year Awards represent innovative offerings that meet the ever-changing needs of the IT channel and their customers.” – CRN

Launched in June 2023 at Cisco Live US and made generally available in September 2023, the Cisco Secure Firewall 4200 has made quite a splash in the market. The 4200 series raises the bar for throughput, performance, and flexibility at an advantageous price. Couple the capabilities of the 4200 series appliance with our latest 7.4 software, and your customers can deliver encrypted threat blocking without decryption, an evolution of Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) with complete threat inspection and policy for each individual application, and simplified branch routing. Plus, with our latest announcements made at Cisco Live APJC, customers can realize the added benefits of AI with our Cisco AI Assistant for Security. With the new capabilities of AI Assistant for Security, you will be able to offer a better solution for your customers enabling better efficacy, a better customer experience, and better economics.

You can leverage discount deal differential via Security Deal registration to maximize your profitability when selling Secure Firewall. Also, you can see added discounts when selling one of our new Security Suites (User Protection, Cloud Protection and Breach Protection) and including firewall in the deal to get added profitability while expanding your deal size.

Thank you to our valued partners for your continued support throughout 2023. The momentum we have created together is incredible and I am looking forward to what 2024 has in store.

Check out CRN’s 2023 Products of the Year

We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with #CiscoPartners on social!

Cisco Partners Facebook  |  @CiscoPartners X/Twitter  |  Cisco Partners LinkedIn

  2023 was an incredible year for Cisco Security and I am thrilled at the opportunity ahead with our partners to carry this momentum into 2024. To kick the new year off on a high note, it brings me great joy to share that CRN has recognized Cisco Secure Firewall 4200 series as the Product of the Year in the Network Security category.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

Reflections from COP28 and looking ahead to next year.

The 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was recently held in Dubai,… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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Reflections from COP28 and looking ahead to next year.

The 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was recently held in Dubai, UAE, and brought government officials and heads of state, business leaders, young people, climate scientists, journalists and various experts together to accelerate global efforts to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Reflections from COP28

I had the opportunity to spend a full week in meetings and sessions, and am energized by the engagement – early numbers of delegates indicate this is the most attended COP ever.

A common thread pulled through discussions surrounded the criticality of public/private partnerships. When we think about climate change, this is the crisis of our lifetime. The progress we make in this decade will be critical for future generations. As we look ahead to 2024, one thing is clear: we must drive action and we must do it together.

As I reflect on the conversations I had at COP28, five trends rose to the top and should be top of mind for all of us as we move into the new year.

Environmental sustainability trends for 2024 and beyond

1. 2024 will be a year of accounting for progress on climate action.

In 2015, the UN-brokered Paris Agreement established an international treaty on climate change. To limit global warming to 1.5°C, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions must peak before 2025 at the latest and decline 43% by 2030. Plans and targets were made by countries and organizations globally to achieve this.
As we get closer to that milestone, it’s becoming increasingly clear that there is no consistent or accurate way to measure progress, both within countries and industries, and globally, to hold us accountable.
Pressure is growing on both the public and private sector, with demands for mandatory reporting now a worldwide refrain.
Regulatory bodies are now considering approaches that can deliver concrete outcomes, but data sources are varied in quality, reporting is fragmented, and many organizations lack the technology to generate and analyze the data they require.
2024 could see this come to a head with the emergence of new industry standards with a focus on GHG emissions accounting and climate impact materiality. The tech industry can play a critical role in delivering enabling technologies that will help companies monitor and assess their footprint.

2. The world’s energy delivery systems will start to show major cracks in the next three years. Governments worldwide must prioritize and incentivize smart grid development in 2024 to avoid major issues.

Many traditional ‘power grids’ are already being stretched to their limits, and increasingly common weather phenomena will continue to add more and more stress. In the U.S., the North America Electric Reliability Corporation warned that much of the U.S. power grid is at an increased risk of failure during major storms or long cold snaps this winter.  (Source: 2023–2024 NERC Winter Reliability Assessment)
At the same time, the growth of renewables demands a more efficient grid to allow renewables to become more viable and avoid the conversion losses all too common in today’s grids. (Source: Digitalizing Europe’s energy system to power the green energy revolution)
Micro grids have already begun to show their viability, which may start encouraging more ideas in harnessing them.
In order to avoid dangerous and costly failures of energy delivery systems, businesses and the public sector must begin now to address the future needs of the grid.

3. The growth of artificial intelligence (AI) creates an opportunity to use this new technology to further our sustainability goals.

We know that AI workloads increase demand for electricity and water as they place enormous demands on data center infrastructure. (Source: The AI Boom Could Use a Shocking Amount of Electricity) But the benefits of AI for sustainability have the potential to outweigh that impact.
Like many other areas, data will be crucial to tackling sustainability challenges. With the promise of AI to make sense of data and offer crucial insights, sustainability could benefit greatly from the application of AI.
AI is only as good as the data it is being fed. So, the emergence of AI may also help solve another major challenge in sustainability: accurate and consistent measurement and the need for centralized and common tooling.

4. A 20-year-old technology, Power over Ethernet (PoE), will finally get its moment in 2024.

Power over Ethernet (the coupling of connectivity and power delivery on the same cable) was first adopted as an IEEE standard in 2003. Since then, use cases for PoE have been varied, but fairly niche, as the vastly preferred method of electrical connectivity remains copper wiring.
The need for buildings to become smarter has never been greater. Building operations and construction accounted for an estimated 37% of CO2 emissions globally in 2021. PoE will allow builders, owners and tenants to use the network to deliver power and connectivity together, enabling a true smart building.

5. Nature-based solutions to climate change will gain traction.

Technological developments are an important part of strategies to mitigate climate change, but discussions at COP28 reinforced the critical role of nature-based solutions, like protecting forests or restoring coastal marshes.
We must innovate and fill gaps in our understanding of nature-based solutions and when to use them. We must deliver climate mitigation, safeguard biological diversity, improve food security, and create more inclusive and resilient communities.
Anticipate an uptick in projects that leverage nature’s capabilities, such as afforestation, reforestation, and sustainable land management.

We’re at a pivotal moment, but with bold, strategic, and collective action, I believe we can help mitigate the worst outcomes of climate change, ensuring the opportunity to build an inclusive future for all.

Read more about what Cisco has accomplished around sustainability, and where we hope to make progress, in our 2023 Purpose Report.

 Cisco 2023 Purpose Report

  Mary de Wysocki, Cisco's Chief Sustainability Officer, reflects on COP28 and five trends that should be top of mind for all of us to help mitigate the worst outcomes of climate change, ensuring the opportunity to build an inclusive future for all.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

When you think about software networking, at its core, it has two basic functions: (1) send traffic from A to B as quickly and efficiently as possible, and (2) move traffic from A to B but NOT to X,… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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When you think about software networking, at its core, it has two basic functions: (1) send traffic from A to B as quickly and efficiently as possible, and (2) move traffic from A to B but NOT to X, Y, or Z. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) separates these two functions, allowing the hardware to perform the first task, while the second task of network policy enforcement is performed in software.

This simple concept becomes a lot trickier though in today’s environment of distributed applications, virtual machines, containers, and cloud assets. Applications may have little to no insight into the underlying infrastructure, leaving a gap in visibility and security. So, how does the security team ensure visibility and proper security controls while not hindering networking and application performance? How do you bring networking and security closer together so that you protect workloads no matter where they run?

That’s where eBPF comes in. It is an open source technology that allows sophisticated software programs to program the heart of the operating system – known as the kernel – without actually changing the heart of the operating system. This is incredibly powerful because it unlocks security, observability, and networking functionality at the kernel-level that was not possible before.

Today, Cisco is excited to announce our intent to acquire Isovalent, Inc., founded by creators of eBPF and the teambehind the creation of Cilium and Tetragon, the leading cloud native solutions leveraging eBPF technology.

Cisco became an investor in Isovalent as part of their Series A funding round in 2020. At the time, Cilium was already used for cloud native connectivity and the default in managed Kubernetes offerings for several major public cloud providers including Google Kubernetes Engine, Google Anthos, and Amazon EKS Anywhere.

Cilium gained high-adoption with hyperscalers and cloud providers because of its unparalleled visibility into the behavior and communication of cloud native applications and seamless ability to define the policy of a software-defined network. Since 2020, Isovalent has continued to innovate, recently introducing Cilium Mesh to allow for the easy connection of Kubernetes clusters with existing infrastructure across hybrid clouds, as well as Tetragon, their open source security application.

Tetragon provides security controls to protect workloads as they run by gathering detailed information about the application’s internal processes and how they behave on the network. This broad insight provides the highest form of protection for workloads running on any cloud. Tetragon also includes important compliance capability and integration with tools cloud providers and enterprises use to monitor and remediate security incidents.

What’s Next

As we look ahead, Cisco is focused on helping customers address these visibility and security challenges through the Cisco Security Cloud, an AI-driven, cloud-delivered, integrated security platform for organizations of any shape and size. A credible hybrid, multicloud network security capability is fundamental to easing operational complexity for our customers. The Cisco Security Cloud does this by making it easier to define and enforce policies from a single cloud-delivered console across both hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Cisco is committed to Cilium and Tetragon as open source projects and intends to create an independent advisory board to help steer Cisco’s contributions to these important efforts in a way that is aligned with the needs of the open source community.  Together, Cisco and Isovalent will build on the power of Cilium and Tetragon to create multicloud security and networking capabilities that are truly unique, Cisco will continue offering and enhancing Isovalent Enterprise for Cilium to customers. Isovalent’s Cilium Mesh complements Cisco software-defined networking solutions and together would give customers seamless and secure networking from the branch office to the data center, to the public cloud, using one continuous mesh. Hardware acceleration of networking functions will ensure that the already performing eBPF platform will continue to lead the industry. By leveraging the threat intelligence of Cisco Talos and Cisco’s increasingly powerful security analytics capability, Cisco and Isovalent will together build leading-edge protection for any workload on any cloud.

Cisco and Isovalent are excited to drive the next generation of cloud networking and security innovation based on open source technology. We look forward to continuing to work with CNCF and other open source communities to provide our customers with the best possible technology and products.

We look forward to welcoming the Isovalent team once the acquisition closes and, together, defining the future of multicloud networking and security.

  Building out our security cloud vision, Cisco announces its intent to acquire Isovalent. Together we will create a unique multicloud security and networking capability to help customers accelerate their digital transformation.  Read More Cisco Blogs