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Newsletter Home > August, 2008
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Cisco and Linksys Channel Programs Get Merged
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Cisco Systems has announced the elimination of the Linksys channel program, and the intent to fold as many as 20,000 channel partners into the "Registered" tier of the overall Cisco channel program.
The move is not a major surprise to most partners, given that Cisco CEO John Chambers has made repeated references to the eventual consolidation of the Cisco and Linksys brands. But the small business market continues to be heavily targeted by the company, which recently formed a small business council whose members include Cisco's chief marketing officer and its senior vice president of worldwide channels.
Cisco intends to leave the current Linksys program in place for only 30 days from the August 12th announcement date. Linksys partners who have not yet registered for the Cisco program by the deadline can continue to purchase products through distribution, but they will not be eligible for the additional benefits of the program until they register with Cisco. Those benefits would include access to marketing resources and online training.
Meanwhile, the Linksys sales and support teams are being moved over to the Cisco management framework so that most partners will continue to work with the same personnel once the transition is made. For the most part, however, day-to-day operations for the legacy Linksys channel partners will continue to be managed through distributors.
Until recently, the Registered tier of the Cisco channel program was mostly used by channel partners who might be kicking tires with Cisco products, or by partners whose core competency was in a technology other than networking, but who ran across a sales opportunity where a networking gap needed to be filled. In either case, requirements for the former Linksys partners around training and customer satisfaction will be substantially lighter, as compared to the other tiers of the Cisco program. Conversely, the program features and benefits will also be scaled down, as compared to the other tiers of the Cisco program.
"We've also decided to create a single product portfolio and go to market strategy around small business, explained Andrew Sage, Cisco's vice president of worldwide small business sales. "We will continue to have the Cisco brand and the "Linksys by Cisco" (Connected Office) brand in that portfolio because we think it is a good way to differentiate between the applicability of those products. [Linksys] is more on demand and transactional, and [Cisco] is more solution oriented. But we are combining them both into a single portfolio that we believe is the broadest portfolio out there.
"By integration, we mean they were going to be taking both of those to market through a single channel program, through a single sales team, and through a single field organization."
The precise demarcation between the Cisco small business gear and a Linksys by Cisco gear has yet to be defined. "Generally, these solutions are going to be differentiated in terms of expandability, modularity, customization," said Sage. "So the Linksys switching family will have fewer options, less configurability than the 2960, for example. Another way to differentiate will be around the support experience. The support around a Linksys solution will be very different from the support on the Cisco solution because the customer expectations are very different. The final difference will be the price points."
Consumer-level products will continue to be sold under the Linksys brand.
Linksys will likely continue to sell its solutions through retailers, DMRs, e-commerce partners, service providers, and smaller VARs. Various campaigns, promotions, and incentives will be put in place for each of the constituent groups.
"We had an opportunity to create another tier in our channel partner program that looked like the Linksys program but we decided that would be too complex," summarized Sage. "The right thing is to integrate the Linksys partner community into the Cisco registered partner community and not create any complexity or additional hoops for them to jump through. The sum of the two programs is actually simpler than the two programs separately."
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Juniper Networks Shakes up Executive Suite
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Juniper Networks made a series of changes to their executive team in July. Most prominently, the Sunnyvale, California-based networking vendor named Microsoft veteran Kevin Johnson as chief executive officer. Upon his arrival in September, Mr. Johnson will also be appointed to the board of directors.
At Microsoft, Johnson, 47, served in a range of strategic executive assignments over the course of his 16-year tenure. Most recently, he led the Platforms & Services Division, an organization of over 14,000 employees with responsibility for product development, marketing and strategy for the Windows and Online Services businesses.
Johnson also served as group vice president of Microsoft's worldwide sales, marketing and services and oversaw corporate operations and IT functions that supported the work of Microsoft employees around the world. Previous to Microsoft, he worked in IBM's systems integration and consulting business and started his career as a software developer. He holds a bachelor's degree in business administration from New Mexico State University.
Outgoing CEO Scott Kriens will continue as chairman of the board and will remain active in the areas of strategy and leadership development.
At the beginning of the month, Juniper also appointed John Morris to the position of executive vice president of worldwide field operations, with responsibility for heading Juniper's global sales, services and channel organizations. Morris joins Juniper from "Pay By Touch," a San Francisco-based biometric payments company, where he served as president and chief executive officer. Mr. Morris joined Pay By Touch following a 23 year career with the IBM Corporation in which he served in a range of executive assignments, most recently as vice president and general manager of the Distribution Sector in the Americas region.
Morris succeeds Eddie Minshull, who as previously announced will remain with the company acting in an advisory capacity until the conclusion of the third fiscal quarter in September.
In addition, Juniper named Philip O'Reilly as senior vice president of U.S. enterprise sales. O'Reilly, 53, joins Juniper Networks after nearly five years at Solunet, Inc., an east central Florida-based channel partner and Juniper Global Partner, where he served as chief executive officer overseeing the overall administration, sales, acquisitions and international business development functions. Prior to Solunet, he was chief financial officer and vice president of business development for Datavon, Inc., a voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) service provider in Texas. O'Reilly has a J.D. from Western New England College School of Law and an MBA from Penn State University.
O'Reilly will be responsible for leading Juniper's U.S. enterprise sales organization, and report to the new worldwide field sales EVP, John Morris.
Avaya Announces New Subsidiary Focused on Sales, Service and Solutions for U.S. Government
Avaya has announced the creation of a wholly-owned subsidiary that will focus on sales, service and solutions for the U.S. Government, called "Avaya Federal Solutions Inc."
The subsidiary will include approximately 400 people dedicated to providing IP telephony, contact center, unified communications and services to meet the unique needs and requirements of the military and civilian branches of the U.S. Government. Jeff Hansen, currently vice president, Avaya's Federal Sales division, has been named president of the organization.
Avaya Appoints Michael Bayer to Lead EMEA Field Operations Organization
Avaya has appointed Michael Bayer as president of Avaya's field operations in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). In his new role, Bayer will lead the region's sales and operations and also will work with customers to deliver Avaya's advanced Unified Communications, IP Telephony and Contact Centre solutions across EMEA.
Bayer joins Avaya from Motorola, where he was vice-president and general manager for Motorola EMEA's Enterprise and Mobility business, and a member of Motorola's global steering committee for country management. Prior to working at Motorola, Bayer was general manager and area vice-president for several European regions at Symbol Technologies (acquired by Motorola in 2007). Bayer also has served in multiple leadership roles at Cisco Systems and T-Mobile (a division of Deutsche Telekom).
VMware Unveils New System Builder Program for Channel Partners
Palo Alto-based virtualization company, VMware, Inc., has rolled out its new System Builder Program that resides within the company's overall channel program. In VMWare's parlance, a "system builder" is considered to be an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) that focuses on local or national distribution.
VMware system builders worldwide can sell VMware's entire line of datacenter and desktop virtualization solutions—composed of more than 20 products that run on top of the company's ESX hypervisor—and have access to benefits including:
- 10 pre-sales tech support cases
- Online trouble-shooting courses and technical training
- Marketing programs and sales tools
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On The Other Hand - The iPhone as a Software Go-to-Market Strategy
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By: Ken Presti
Several months ago, I bought an iPhone – mostly because I'd looked at a number of different smart phones and felt that the iPhone had the most intuitive interface. In general, I'm very happy with the purchase. However, a few weeks ago, when Apple rolled out the new version of the iPhone, I noticed that accessories for last year's version of the phone were no longer being restocked. Now I am not a major accessories guy, but I once learned the hard way about the importance of the strong, secure holster. So I'm hoping that Apple gets a lot of feedback from people who bought the previous version of the phone and still obviously need the supplies to go with it.
But the most compelling part about the iPhone came out at the same time that they introduced the new device. The ability to download a wide variety of applications by a number of ISVs and, most likely, a handful of guys working in their spare bedrooms, has major implications for the future of software distribution.
The software products are categorized by business, education, entertainment, finance, games, health care, lifestyle, news, travel, and a host of others. Prices are generally pretty low and often free of charge, especially when using the software is contingent upon signing up for something to enable the service. Each software offering also has a page of reviews typically written by users although sometimes they have the industry tone of the PR guy. But the reviews can be very useful in deciding whether or not to download a particular product. Right now, it's a good thing that they are either cheap or free because at their current level they are by no means bulletproof. The applications often crash, and the occasional upgrades have sometimes been known to purge the data as well.
But the potential is profound. In essence, the iPhone becomes not only a marketplace in itself, it can also be used as a beachhead for further sales that extend way beyond the device, itself. For example, I wonder if salesforce.com's prospects might find it easier to make their purchase decision after they realize that their people will be able to access most of the services resources through their iPhone.
In this respect, the device becomes more than a phone, more than an e-mail tool, and more than mobile Internet access. It becomes a route to market, in and of itself.
Although a few companies have clearly seen the potential here, it will likely take a while before the opportunity becomes more fully realized. Apple will not be able to keep this go-to-market strategy all to itself. No doubt, other vendors of smart phones will recognize this opportunity and begin to build in the same sorts of sales mechanisms that the iPhone carries.
Hyper-connectivity is about to get a little more hyper.
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