WEBVTT
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You're listening to B two B Tech
Talk with Ingram Micro, the place to
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learn about new technology and technological advances
before they become mainstream. This is the
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Cisco edition taking your business. I'll
level up, let's get into it.
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Welcome to B two B Tech Talk
with Ingram Micro. I'm your host Shelby
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skirt Hawk, and today we have
three guests to discuss the history of Cisco
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software and what's ahead for partners.
From Cisco, I'm joined by Christian Hansen,
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Software and Services to Business Development Manager, and from Ingram Micro, I'm
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joined by Arianna Santiago solution sales Specialists
and Kayla Zelenski, solution sales specialist as
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well. Christian, Arianna and Kayla
Welcome, Thank you, Shelby, thank
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thank you. Well. As I
mentioned, you know, we are talking
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about the history of Cisco software and
what's ahead for partners. But first,
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Christian, since we are talking about
the history of Cisco, a little bit
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of a you know did you know? Or a little fun fact? Where's
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the name Cisco come from? I
understand that it's an abbreviation of something it
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is and uh, good question.
Many people think it's an acronym and it's
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come up a lot you from friends
and family, and my kids asked once
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and then they guessed, and it
was like Computer Information Systems Corporation and always
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something in that vein. But it's
actually just an abbreviation of San Francisco,
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where it was found, where we
were founded, even though we're in San
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Jose. Now, you know obviously
the general Bay area, so short for
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San Francisco. And on the logo
what looks like access bars or strength like
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you would have on your cell phone, is that the lines are of the
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Golden gate Bridge. I'll be darn
you're right. You're right. Okay,
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I'm cheating and looking at it right
now. So we know Cisco for hardware,
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but you know, Christian, what
does Cisco offer in terms of software
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that's really moving the needle? Yeah, good point. I think when people
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think of Cisco, it's obvious that
they think of hardware first, and that's
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because we were one of the pioneers
and creating the backbone of the Internet,
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and that's certainly how we became a
global tech leader. But since our curren
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CEO, Chuck Robbins, took over
in two thousand and fifteen, we've been
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making a lot of aggressive moves towards
software and recurring revenue in general, and
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that's both through innovation and through acquisitions. And so you know, for us,
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it's really about our B two B
customer outcomes and as our customers of
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all their businesses digital transformation, all
the changes that have gone on and are
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going on as they need to meet
different needs of their inn customers. That's
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done through a multi architecture approach,
and we work with our our vast partner
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organised Station to leverage our broad technology
portfolio, and that combined with our partners
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own business services, is a great
are great solutions to meet the needs of
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our partners and customers or you know, as I would say, I guess
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us, Yeah, well, I
wonder if you can break down some of
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those uh software offerings you mentioned.
You start to mention those, but you
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know, across the different Cisco architectures, I guess, uh, you know,
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where do we start? Where do
we start with some of those Cisco
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software? Sure? Well, you
know we're giants, so it's it's hard
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to really go into too much depth
on any one area and where we have
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such a broad and vast portfolio and
really most of what we do is solution
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based in cross architecture. And I'll
just touch on a few of our key
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priorities right now. One is full
stack observe ability, another one is secure
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Access Service Edge, which you've probably
heard referred to ASSASSY. And third that's
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big right now is obviously hybrid work. So full stack of observe ability enables
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our customers to deliver optimal application experiences
with deep business context from both on prem
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and in public clouds, whereas SASSY
is about combining both networking and security functions
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into a single integrated as a service
cloud offering with end to end observe ability.
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You know, hybrid work is really
popular in the industry right now for
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obvious reasons, coming out of COVID
and UH. People changing the way they
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work, and what probably seemed temporary
at first is has some permanence to it,
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I believe, and our unique hybrid
work offer gives customers the tools and
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data to create truly hybrid work environment, enabling employees to work from either home
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or the office or really anywhere in
between. And you know, some of
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those are branded, like I said, it's really mark a cross architecture and
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multi architecture solutions, but some of
the software we is recognizable in the consumer
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market. One of them are bigger
ones being WebEx. Yes, uh,
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you know the prevalence of you know, conferencing video conferencing software. I mean,
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gosh, you know where most of
us maybe just use Skype a little
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bit, you know, maybe a
Zoom calling every once in a while.
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Now, my gosh, I mean
basically you are you're a ninja in.
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You know, if you work from
home and you're one of those home office
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warriors, you you know, you're
a ninja in in WebEx and Teams and
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Zoom and all of the major platforms
out there. So yeah, I mean
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it's uh, you know, with
that visibility and the consumer space in business
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consumer, I guess I can see
where there's a lot of ground to cover
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with Cisco software. Yeah, that
dreaded right before a meeting. Situation where
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you have to download something new or
new plug in is always stressful, happen
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me read Oh yes, well,
um kayla, let me let me bring
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you in to discuss how Ingram Micro
really serves those different Cisco architectures. So
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what is Ingram's value proposition? That's
honestly a great question, and truthfully,
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I would have to say that it
stems from the army of people that we
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have at Ingram, so from start
to finish it we can basically help in
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any point of the process. We
have a great team of pre sales tech
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support members. We also have technical
account managers for those situations that are even
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kind of one off or need a
little more attention. They specialize in different
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architectures and are really subject matter experts
when it comes to building the configurations,
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understanding what not only the partner need, but the end user need is in
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really making sure that what they're building
out is accurate. From there, we
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have a team that can help with
authorizations and creating those deals with the partner,
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and that's our land team here at
Ingram. And then coming down even
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further into the software space, there
is a whole team within Ingram Micro for
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Cisco software. Specifically, it's made
up of a group of oh gosh,
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I think it's grown into about fifteen
operational individuals who handle quotes and orders on
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a day to day basis. Um
we have probably about six members that are
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solely dedicated to billing and Ariana myself
just recently joined as the solution sales specialists
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to help from partner enablement side,
So really anything within the Cisco software space.
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We're really kind of building out that
team to help make sure that we
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can kind of help navigate and I'll
say, and just really kind of grow
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with Cisco growing in the software world, right right. I Mean that's the
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thing is that you know, Ingram
supports the partners that support their customers,
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and so it's uh, you know, being able to have that breadth of
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knowledge and manpower because you know,
we know that uh that skills and manpower
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or scares and being able to have
that kind of you know, these subject
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matter experts basically assembled you know,
for for partners is you know, certainly
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a big part of it, right
right, absolutely, Well, so,
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Arianna, I guess if we could
talk about some of the you know,
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specific resources. I mean, you
know, Kalen mentioned the pre sales tech
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support. Is that the same as
solution design and services? And I guess
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what are some of those resources that
Ingram Micro offers their their partners and resellers.
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Yep, So he has the pre
sales tech solutions and they just helped
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build out configurations for the customer and
they just build out the entire thing for
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them based on their needs and then
they will create an estimate for them and
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the partner will turn that into a
d I D which sends it to the
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Cisco Software Team and then we quote
it and then that's how that goes.
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But another resource we have is the
Cisco Virtual Learnings. We host those either
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monthly or quarterly, it depends,
but they're just webinars for our resellers that
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for on topics that have been pain
points for them, such as how to
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do renewals or our truth forwards.
And then we also record these so that
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the resellers can go back and listen, or if someone new joins their team,
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they have access to those recordings so
that they can kind of quickly learn
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and get up to speed with our
processes. And then another great thing that
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we've been working on on the Cisco
Software team is we've been working with our
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renew View team at Ingram. Renew
View team actually sends out proactive renewal notices
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to our partners and it helps them
stay on top of their upcoming renewals.
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It kind of just takes one more
saying off of their plate so that they
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don't have to remind themselves or their
partners when a renewal is coming to we
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do it for them. They have
a new view dashboard that they can go
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on and view all the renewals in
one spot too. And then, like
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Kayla said, I would say the
best resource would be me and Kayla ourselves
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to help the partners navigate the Cisco
software world. It can be a little
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tricky sometimes, but partners can lean
on us for any kind of enablement or
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understanding that they might need. Ye. Well, and that's you know,
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being able to have somebody to talk
to about these things that you know as
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resources. Online resources are great and
and webinars are fantastic resources to have.
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But you know, maybe sometimes you
just have one single question that you need
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answered. I imagine that you guys
are the are the ones to help with
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that stuff, right, definitely.
So Christian, let me ask you about
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this about the relationship of of Cisco
and Ingram Micro. How did the two
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work well together? And I guess
what's important to understand about what what's in
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store for partners coming down the pipeline. Ingram Micro is really a big partner
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of ours, a big and I
don't mean that in the sense of a
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resale partner, A true partner in
the sense of an extension of Cisco,
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and that's really how we look at
Ingram and that extending out not just our
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competency programs helping them get the technical
expertise and identifying partners who are strong in
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in across other vendors who might do
well at Cisco, but really driving our
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solutions are revenue programs, are incentives
and and everything it is to be a
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successful partner. We extend our reach
through Ingram Micro. So an absolutely critical
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part of Cisco's go to market strategy
is working very closely with Ingram Micro.
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Also, you know, as we
do start to wrap up our episode,
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we always ask our guests the same
final question, and that's where do you
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see technology going in the next year. Now, of course that that's a
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that's very broad, but you know, I wonder if you can get a
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little bit of your crystal ball out
and and look ahead to three. So
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Kristan, I'll go ahead and start
with you. Yeah, I think you
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touched on it earlier when you you
mentioned the various platforms that are out there,
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and I think that's just a general
that's not changing. There's a lot
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of competition out there as things as
technology starts to become commoditized. I think
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it's very important, and Cisco has
a lot of advantages in having a broad
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portfolio with integrated solutions, multi architecture, but with that also becomes challenges because
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of those other platforms that you brought
up. They customers might be really embedded
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with certain vendors, and if you're
not flexible to tie around those vendors,
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you could be locked out of a
customer completely. So I think having the
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broad architecture is huge, but also
the flexibility to be able to coexist with
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other tech chnologies is becoming increasingly valuable
as well. Yeah, that is important,
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Tayla. How about you. I
personally think we're going to kind of
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see that kind of work from home
model grow even more. Um. I
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think that we've seen it over the
last year, and I kind of agree
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with question. I think Cisco has
done a great job kind of adapting to
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that. Just being on the software
team in general. Over the last year,
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we have seen the uptick and those
subscriptions and everything, and I think
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that's just going to continue to grow. And I think that not just from
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a Cisco standpoint, but from kind
of a technology standpoint that a lot of
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stuff will be moving kind of to
that subscription based model. And Arianna,
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how about you. I think we're
going to start to see more companies make
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platforms rather than online websites, so
it can be a one stop shop for
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everything they might need instead of going
to ten different websites for doing one's task
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like Amazon. Yeah. Yeah,
that's smart. That's smart to be able
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to offer up. So no spaceships, surprised no one mentioned spaceships maybe,
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but building blocks for spaceships for sure? Right right, all right, Well,
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I really appreciate all your time insight
today, Christian, Kayla, and
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Arianna, thank you so much for
joining me problem. Thanks for having us,
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Shelby, Thank you, Shelby,
and thank you listeners for tuning in
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00:14:26.200 --> 00:14:28.720
and subscribing to B two B Tech
Talk with Ingram Micro. If you liked
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00:14:28.759 --> 00:14:33.279
this episode or have a question,
please join the discussion on Twitter with the
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hashtag B two B tech Talk.
Until next time, I'm Shelby scar Hawk.
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00:14:37.919 --> 00:14:41.480
You've been listening to B two B
Tech Talk with Ingram Micro Cisco Edition,
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00:14:41.799 --> 00:14:46.039
Taking your business, I'll level up. BOB Tech Talk is a joint
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production by Sweet Fish Media and Ingram
Micro. Ingram Micro production handled by Laura
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00:14:50.720 --> 00:14:54.840
Burton and Christine Fan. To not
miss an episode, subscribe today in your
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favorite podcast platform.
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You're listening to B two B Tech
Talk with Ingram Micro, the place to
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00:00:16.039 --> 00:00:21.519
learn about new technology and technological advances
before they become mainstream. This is the
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00:00:21.559 --> 00:00:25.839
Cisco edition taking your business. I'll
level up, let's get into it.
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00:00:27.320 --> 00:00:30.440
Welcome to B two B Tech Talk
with Ingram Micro. I'm your host Shelby
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00:00:30.480 --> 00:00:34.840
skirt Hawk, and today we have
three guests to discuss the history of Cisco
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software and what's ahead for partners.
From Cisco, I'm joined by Christian Hansen,
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Software and Services to Business Development Manager, and from Ingram Micro, I'm
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joined by Arianna Santiago solution sales Specialists
and Kayla Zelenski, solution sales specialist as
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well. Christian, Arianna and Kayla
Welcome, Thank you, Shelby, thank
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thank you. Well. As I
mentioned, you know, we are talking
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about the history of Cisco software and
what's ahead for partners. But first,
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Christian, since we are talking about
the history of Cisco, a little bit
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of a you know did you know? Or a little fun fact? Where's
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the name Cisco come from? I
understand that it's an abbreviation of something it
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is and uh, good question.
Many people think it's an acronym and it's
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come up a lot you from friends
and family, and my kids asked once
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and then they guessed, and it
was like Computer Information Systems Corporation and always
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something in that vein. But it's
actually just an abbreviation of San Francisco,
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where it was found, where we
were founded, even though we're in San
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Jose. Now, you know obviously
the general Bay area, so short for
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San Francisco. And on the logo
what looks like access bars or strength like
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you would have on your cell phone, is that the lines are of the
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Golden gate Bridge. I'll be darn
you're right. You're right. Okay,
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I'm cheating and looking at it right
now. So we know Cisco for hardware,
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but you know, Christian, what
does Cisco offer in terms of software
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that's really moving the needle? Yeah, good point. I think when people
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think of Cisco, it's obvious that
they think of hardware first, and that's
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because we were one of the pioneers
and creating the backbone of the Internet,
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and that's certainly how we became a
global tech leader. But since our curren
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CEO, Chuck Robbins, took over
in two thousand and fifteen, we've been
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making a lot of aggressive moves towards
software and recurring revenue in general, and
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that's both through innovation and through acquisitions. And so you know, for us,
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it's really about our B two B
customer outcomes and as our customers of
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all their businesses digital transformation, all
the changes that have gone on and are
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going on as they need to meet
different needs of their inn customers. That's
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done through a multi architecture approach,
and we work with our our vast partner
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organised Station to leverage our broad technology
portfolio, and that combined with our partners
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own business services, is a great
are great solutions to meet the needs of
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our partners and customers or you know, as I would say, I guess
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us, Yeah, well, I
wonder if you can break down some of
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those uh software offerings you mentioned.
You start to mention those, but you
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know, across the different Cisco architectures, I guess, uh, you know,
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where do we start? Where do
we start with some of those Cisco
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software? Sure? Well, you
know we're giants, so it's it's hard
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to really go into too much depth
on any one area and where we have
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such a broad and vast portfolio and
really most of what we do is solution
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based in cross architecture. And I'll
just touch on a few of our key
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priorities right now. One is full
stack observe ability, another one is secure
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Access Service Edge, which you've probably
heard referred to ASSASSY. And third that's
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big right now is obviously hybrid work. So full stack of observe ability enables
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our customers to deliver optimal application experiences
with deep business context from both on prem
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and in public clouds, whereas SASSY
is about combining both networking and security functions
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into a single integrated as a service
cloud offering with end to end observe ability.
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You know, hybrid work is really
popular in the industry right now for
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obvious reasons, coming out of COVID
and UH. People changing the way they
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work, and what probably seemed temporary
at first is has some permanence to it,
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I believe, and our unique hybrid
work offer gives customers the tools and
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data to create truly hybrid work environment, enabling employees to work from either home
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or the office or really anywhere in
between. And you know, some of
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those are branded, like I said, it's really mark a cross architecture and
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multi architecture solutions, but some of
the software we is recognizable in the consumer
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market. One of them are bigger
ones being WebEx. Yes, uh,
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you know the prevalence of you know, conferencing video conferencing software. I mean,
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gosh, you know where most of
us maybe just use Skype a little
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bit, you know, maybe a
Zoom calling every once in a while.
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Now, my gosh, I mean
basically you are you're a ninja in.
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You know, if you work from
home and you're one of those home office
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warriors, you you know, you're
a ninja in in WebEx and Teams and
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Zoom and all of the major platforms
out there. So yeah, I mean
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it's uh, you know, with
that visibility and the consumer space in business
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consumer, I guess I can see
where there's a lot of ground to cover
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with Cisco software. Yeah, that
dreaded right before a meeting. Situation where
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you have to download something new or
new plug in is always stressful, happen
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me read Oh yes, well,
um kayla, let me let me bring
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you in to discuss how Ingram Micro
really serves those different Cisco architectures. So
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what is Ingram's value proposition? That's
honestly a great question, and truthfully,
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I would have to say that it
stems from the army of people that we
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have at Ingram, so from start
to finish it we can basically help in
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any point of the process. We
have a great team of pre sales tech
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support members. We also have technical
account managers for those situations that are even
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kind of one off or need a
little more attention. They specialize in different
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architectures and are really subject matter experts
when it comes to building the configurations,
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understanding what not only the partner need, but the end user need is in
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really making sure that what they're building
out is accurate. From there, we
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have a team that can help with
authorizations and creating those deals with the partner,
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and that's our land team here at
Ingram. And then coming down even
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further into the software space, there
is a whole team within Ingram Micro for
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Cisco software. Specifically, it's made
up of a group of oh gosh,
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I think it's grown into about fifteen
operational individuals who handle quotes and orders on
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a day to day basis. Um
we have probably about six members that are
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solely dedicated to billing and Ariana myself
just recently joined as the solution sales specialists
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to help from partner enablement side,
So really anything within the Cisco software space.
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We're really kind of building out that
team to help make sure that we
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can kind of help navigate and I'll
say, and just really kind of grow
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with Cisco growing in the software world, right right. I Mean that's the
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thing is that you know, Ingram
supports the partners that support their customers,
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and so it's uh, you know, being able to have that breadth of
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knowledge and manpower because you know,
we know that uh that skills and manpower
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or scares and being able to have
that kind of you know, these subject
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matter experts basically assembled you know,
for for partners is you know, certainly
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a big part of it, right
right, absolutely, Well, so,
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Arianna, I guess if we could
talk about some of the you know,
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specific resources. I mean, you
know, Kalen mentioned the pre sales tech
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support. Is that the same as
solution design and services? And I guess
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what are some of those resources that
Ingram Micro offers their their partners and resellers.
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Yep, So he has the pre
sales tech solutions and they just helped
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build out configurations for the customer and
they just build out the entire thing for
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them based on their needs and then
they will create an estimate for them and
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the partner will turn that into a
d I D which sends it to the
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Cisco Software Team and then we quote
it and then that's how that goes.
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But another resource we have is the
Cisco Virtual Learnings. We host those either
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monthly or quarterly, it depends,
but they're just webinars for our resellers that
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for on topics that have been pain
points for them, such as how to
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do renewals or our truth forwards.
And then we also record these so that
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the resellers can go back and listen, or if someone new joins their team,
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they have access to those recordings so
that they can kind of quickly learn
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and get up to speed with our
processes. And then another great thing that
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we've been working on on the Cisco
Software team is we've been working with our
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renew View team at Ingram. Renew
View team actually sends out proactive renewal notices
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to our partners and it helps them
stay on top of their upcoming renewals.
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It kind of just takes one more
saying off of their plate so that they
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don't have to remind themselves or their
partners when a renewal is coming to we
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do it for them. They have
a new view dashboard that they can go
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on and view all the renewals in
one spot too. And then, like
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Kayla said, I would say the
best resource would be me and Kayla ourselves
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to help the partners navigate the Cisco
software world. It can be a little
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tricky sometimes, but partners can lean
on us for any kind of enablement or
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understanding that they might need. Ye. Well, and that's you know,
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being able to have somebody to talk
to about these things that you know as
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resources. Online resources are great and
and webinars are fantastic resources to have.
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But you know, maybe sometimes you
just have one single question that you need
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answered. I imagine that you guys
are the are the ones to help with
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that stuff, right, definitely.
So Christian, let me ask you about
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this about the relationship of of Cisco
and Ingram Micro. How did the two
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work well together? And I guess
what's important to understand about what what's in
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store for partners coming down the pipeline. Ingram Micro is really a big partner
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of ours, a big and I
don't mean that in the sense of a
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resale partner, A true partner in
the sense of an extension of Cisco,
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and that's really how we look at
Ingram and that extending out not just our
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competency programs helping them get the technical
expertise and identifying partners who are strong in
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in across other vendors who might do
well at Cisco, but really driving our
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solutions are revenue programs, are incentives
and and everything it is to be a
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successful partner. We extend our reach
through Ingram Micro. So an absolutely critical
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part of Cisco's go to market strategy
is working very closely with Ingram Micro.
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Also, you know, as we
do start to wrap up our episode,
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we always ask our guests the same
final question, and that's where do you
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see technology going in the next year. Now, of course that that's a
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that's very broad, but you know, I wonder if you can get a
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little bit of your crystal ball out
and and look ahead to three. So
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Kristan, I'll go ahead and start
with you. Yeah, I think you
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touched on it earlier when you you
mentioned the various platforms that are out there,
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and I think that's just a general
that's not changing. There's a lot
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of competition out there as things as
technology starts to become commoditized. I think
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it's very important, and Cisco has
a lot of advantages in having a broad
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portfolio with integrated solutions, multi architecture, but with that also becomes challenges because
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of those other platforms that you brought
up. They customers might be really embedded
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with certain vendors, and if you're
not flexible to tie around those vendors,
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you could be locked out of a
customer completely. So I think having the
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broad architecture is huge, but also
the flexibility to be able to coexist with
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other tech chnologies is becoming increasingly valuable
as well. Yeah, that is important,
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Tayla. How about you. I
personally think we're going to kind of
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see that kind of work from home
model grow even more. Um. I
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think that we've seen it over the
last year, and I kind of agree
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with question. I think Cisco has
done a great job kind of adapting to
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that. Just being on the software
team in general. Over the last year,
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we have seen the uptick and those
subscriptions and everything, and I think
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that's just going to continue to grow. And I think that not just from
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a Cisco standpoint, but from kind
of a technology standpoint that a lot of
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stuff will be moving kind of to
that subscription based model. And Arianna,
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how about you. I think we're
going to start to see more companies make
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platforms rather than online websites, so
it can be a one stop shop for
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everything they might need instead of going
to ten different websites for doing one's task
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like Amazon. Yeah. Yeah,
that's smart. That's smart to be able
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to offer up. So no spaceships, surprised no one mentioned spaceships maybe,
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but building blocks for spaceships for sure? Right right, all right, Well,
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I really appreciate all your time insight
today, Christian, Kayla, and
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Arianna, thank you so much for
joining me problem. Thanks for having us,
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Shelby, Thank you, Shelby,
and thank you listeners for tuning in
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and subscribing to B two B Tech
Talk with Ingram Micro. If you liked
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00:14:28.759 --> 00:14:33.279
this episode or have a question,
please join the discussion on Twitter with the
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00:14:33.279 --> 00:14:37.720
hashtag B two B tech Talk.
Until next time, I'm Shelby scar Hawk.
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00:14:37.919 --> 00:14:41.480
You've been listening to B two B
Tech Talk with Ingram Micro Cisco Edition,
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00:14:41.799 --> 00:14:46.039
Taking your business, I'll level up. BOB Tech Talk is a joint
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00:14:46.039 --> 00:14:50.679
production by Sweet Fish Media and Ingram
Micro. Ingram Micro production handled by Laura
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00:14:50.720 --> 00:14:54.840
Burton and Christine Fan. To not
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