Episode 103: Controlled Chaos

Erick and Rich talk about strategies for changing endpoint and network management from increasingly commoditized services to profit engines, as well as three strategies for accelerating MSP growth in AI, cloud, and remote productivity. Then they’re joined by Cisco execs Tim Coogan and Elisabeth De Dobbeleer to discuss the new Cisco 360 partner program and the channel analysis behind it. And finally, one last thing: A jail break story about a failed attempt to break IN to a South Carolina prison with a stash of steak, weed, crab legs, cigarettes, and Old Bay.

Discussed in this episode:

News Flash: Networks and Endpoints Still Exist

Cisco 360 Partner Program Empowers Partners to Drive Profitability in an AI Era

Cisco Simplifies Security for Managed Service Providers, Accelerating Their Hybrid Mesh Firewall Deployments and Business Growth

Drone drops crab legs, steak and weed into South Carolina prison: “Folks were planning an early holiday Old Bay crab boil”

Some guests on this podcast are clients of Channel Mastered. Compensation plays no part in their appearance or the content of the discussion unless the episode they appear on is a “bonus episode” explicitly labeled as sponsored.

 

Transcript:

Rich: [00:00:00] This episode of MSP Chat is brought to you by Datto, BCDR, because smart MSPs know that uptime isn’t just protection, it’s profit. With Datto BCDR, you get all in one backup Ransomware protection and instant recovery purpose built For MSPs, that means less time managing patchwork tools and more time growing your revenue.

You’ll reduce tickets, automate routine backup tasks, and deliver reliable continuity that keeps your clients operational and loyal. And because it’s built for MSPs, Gato helps you scale your services without scaling your workload. More endpoints, more clients, more margin. Wanna see how Datto helps you do more with less?

Visit datto.com and explore the profitability power [00:01:00] of Datto, BCDR and 3, 2, 1. Blast off. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome another episode of the MSP Chat podcast, your weekly visit with two talking heads, talking with you about the services, strategies, and success tips you need to make it big and manage services.

My name is Rich Freeman. I’m chief analyst at Channel Master, the organization responsible for the show. I am joined as I am every week, Bahar, CEO, and chief strategist at Channel Mastered. His name is Erick Simpson. Erick, how you doing?

Erick: I’m doing fantastic, rich. I think I’m all done with my Christmas shopping check that box off now.

It’s time to wrap when nobody’s at home. How about you?

Rich: You, you mentioned yeah, two days ago as we’re recording this, that you had finished up your Christmas shopping and it made me very nervous. Actually I’m mostly done but I, and I do this every year as I, I save the hardest people to shop for last.

So I have two more people to deal with, but I have no idea what I’m getting. Either one of [00:02:00] them. But there’s still time. There’s time here.

Erick: I believe in you, rich. I know you’ll pull it off. No

Rich: worries. Somehow or another I do it every year. I’m sure I’ll do it again. Yep. But until then, let’s dive into our story of the week.

And it’s based on a story that I posted on my blog channel Holic recently, which is in turn based mostly though not entirely on interviews that I did at the ConnectWise IT Nation Connect Event some weeks back. And as I was talking to various companies during that event, this theme started emerging in my mind, which is as much as we are focused quite understandably and rightly on AI and cybersecurity and cloud these days hardware, endpoints and networks they’re still a thing.

They’re still out there. Businesses all have them. They might be somewhat commoditized services in terms of supporting them for MSPs, but MSPs still need to do that. So the question becomes as an MSP, how do I turn these [00:03:00] services that are semi, if not entirely commoditized right now into a source, not only of revenue, but of profit and maybe even a little bit of a competitive edge?

And I’m at the ConnectWise event. I’m talking to the folks at avic and they’re well aware of the fact that users. Their endpoints are sometimes at home and sometimes at the coffee shop, and sometimes on the road as well as in the office. And you really wanna make sure that wherever it is that person is located, they’re getting good speeds, good performance out of the network.

And that’s the stack that OIC has been building for a number of years now. But they’re also well aware of the fact that as the action shifts into security and cloud and AI and et cetera finding like deep network expertise is getting harder and harder for msp. So if you want them to be able to deliver a profitable network service, you’ve gotta use AI to simplify some of that management for people who haven’t gone deep there.

And that’s something that they’re doing at [00:04:00] oic. It’s something they’re doing at Land Sweep or another company that I spoke about. It’s something that they’re doing or I spoke about in the article, spoke with at the event. Something that Nile Secure is doing n Secure. Wasn’t to my knowledge at the conference, but I spoke with one of their executives very recently.

They built an entire hardware stack from the ground up. It’s entirely their own integrated out of the box, therefore integrated out of the box with their software stack. And they’ve built a business model basically where nobody, the end user never pays for the hardware. It’s a subscription service that includes the hardware, including the updates.

If the new access point becomes available, it just shows up at your front door with your MSP and goes into place and you benefit from that. A lot of AI in the stack. So from an MSP standpoint, this is a solution that is easy to support but it’s also easy to sell and which makes it because it’s both easier to deliver and easier to sell.

Again, this becomes an opportunity to get [00:05:00] profit out of that service. Absolute security, a company that you and I both met with at the ConnectWise event. They do endpoint security and you wouldn’t think there is a lot of differentiation or margin opportunity there right now, but their solution thanks to relationships they’ve been building for decades with 28 different PC manufacturers, they have their software embedded in a secure place on the motherboard basically.

So you, you order an hp, a Lenovo, a Dell, and a Seus device for your customers. Those arrive with the absolute soft security software in place. That software is gonna give you capabilities that you don’t necessarily get from an anti-malware or EDR solution, including the ability to make adjustments pre-boot, which would’ve come in hugely valuable for people.

When the CrowdStrike incident happened last year, you know that it would’ve been much easier, therefore. [00:06:00] More much less expensive, more profitable to deal with that if you were an absolute partner at the time. And I guess the theme here, Erick, is endpoint network management. They’re not going away.

What you’re looking for as an MSP are ways to deliver those services as cost effectively and therefore profitably as possible. And it’s good to know that there are vendors out there that are leaning into AI and other ways of making those necessary, but not necessarily differentiating tasks more profitable and more of a differentiator for you as an MSP.

And it’s something that you need as you’re evaluating vendors. It’s definitely something that you need to be looking at as you’re comparing your options. Which of these companies is gonna enable me to do this increasingly commoditized service profitably?

Erick: Great story of the week. Rich. I’ve been thinking.

Off and on over probably the last few months, but more, more so recently. As we’re talking to more of these vendors, as you [00:07:00] mentioned, Hey, there’s this, hardware is still a thing, endpoints are still a thing. It’s, and realizing that all of these services and devices that MSPs have tra traditionally been deploying, managing, supporting for clients still require that type of oversight.

Now we’re layering in a higher, level of cybersecurity. We’re layering in things that can support AI and governance there and consulting around it. And what I’ve been thinking about Rich is do we need another, like asterisk as a service moniker for all of this? Because it seems to be a lot broader than network as service or managed services, or infrastructure as services.

Now it’s ai, it’s business outcomes. As a service. So I’ll I’d love your feedback on that. Maybe we’ll ask our audience to post in this, post the comment and think about new as a service. Are you [00:08:00] guys adjusting and ducking and weaving and creating new as a service offerings to reflect kind of everything that was old is new again, to support the new again stuff or the new stuff.

What are your thoughts, rich?

Rich: Yeah, it’s it’s a very interesting take on the, I, I would say the business outcome needs to be the core of your business. And we’ll actually talk about that a little bit later. On the episode, we have two very senior executives from Cisco joining us on the show to talk about their new partner program.

So stick around for that. So I personally am inclined not to talk about business outcome as a service. I’m inclined to just showcase that as the reason to do business with me the thing that I care about and care about most and I’m best at. But I also need to take care of your endpoint and network infrastructure and packaging that all up under a la I kinda like that idea of having a label for that that you’re right doesn’t really exist right now.

And, infrastructure is a [00:09:00] service comes to mind. But that’s in use in the cloud world. So we need something else. Foundation as a service basis as a service would would probably resonate in Europe. Something about, the core stuff that enabled you to do the business outcome.

Delivering stuff where we’re really gonna spend our time focusing with you.

Erick: Yeah, I’d like to see a new term that focuses not, that doesn’t denote like a the immediate thought is at the cost center, oh, infrastructure, you’re gonna manage my, we’ve had conversations with other vendors that have enlightened us to a tremendous opportunity for new gear, new hardware that’s AI enabled and the massive storage requirements now for ai private LL Private, private ai solutions for customers that a lot of partners are beginning to consult on and deploy, which I’ll talk a little bit about in my tip of the week.

So this is a tectonic shift in terms of what we thought, it support was now trying to keep up [00:10:00] with the risks, but also the opportunities for both MSPs and for the clients that they serve.

Rich: Let’s let’s not wait, let’s get right into your tip of the week. If networks and endpoints are it’s still increasingly or still incredibly relevant, but the action is in some of these other areas that I was talking about before.

Let’s talk a little bit about what MSPs need to do to make sure they’re capitalizing on that new and hotter opportunity.

Erick: Yes, absolutely. And as we look towards 2026, we know Rich, that the industry will see a ton of accelerated AI driven automation. Opportunities cloud optimization opportunities for partners to go in and look at, the spend that clients are spending in different areas of cloud storage and backup and retention remote productivity enhancements.

How do we simplify the [00:11:00] tool set and how do we enhance the end user experience to do exactly what you said folks are doing. Rich is, delivering their work role or conducting their work role without any thought as to where they physically are on the planet or in space.

Look I’m predicting, some of this stuff will also assist us in in communications and hopefully security for folks that are, maybe on a space station or something. Who knows, right? It’s a brave new world here. So the MSPs that lead these initiatives.

Will help win those business opportunities and the strategic high ground. So three quick tips that I’ll tie all this stuff together. The way I’m thinking about it is, we’ve talked Rich on the show several times about, how MSPs are looking to capitalize on the AI opportunity. I remember when we first started talking about this topic, when it was just still evolving and accelerating quickly, and we’re like we don’t [00:12:00] know yet how MSPs are gonna monetize this option.

We got a pretty good idea now at this point. A couple of things that MSPs can do is to adopt an AI consulting approach, creating a value added service, a strategic value service to end customers that helps them get the most out of the data that they’ve got everywhere. Help them normalize that data bring analysis from that data in a very, secure manner.

Using ai automating workflows, helping improve employee productivity, some AgTech support there for different roles in the organization. We’re seeing lots of third party vendors pop up that I haven’t yet seen marketing specifically to MSPs, which I see it, the marketing more to end customers now about, hey, we can provide every member of your team and an agent or their role, whether that’s in finance or HR or sales or marketing or operations, those kinds of things.

So some consulting around [00:13:00] adopting AI in a very secure manner, delivering better ANA analytics and data that businesses can make better decisions around helping them market and sell more effectively and support their customers more effectively. And then securing those AI systems, I think, and I think you do too, rich.

This is gonna be a huge growth vertical in 2026 and beyond. Number two, building cloud cost optimization services that reduce Azure or AWS waste and generate measurable savings for clients. So this is in that. I would also align this around the adjacency of kind of shadow it and zombie it.

So where are we overspending for some of our subscription services? So think, Azure are we spending too much? Can we optimize that AWS and specifically around licensing 90, the 98, 90 9%, I would say, I don’t know what I’m here of. My customers at [00:14:00] MSP Server Rich are using Microsoft licenses, M 365 and copilot and the security offerings and things like that.

But. Who’s managing that and keeping up with it. Are there licenses that are there that the clients are paying for that are no longer in use, people moving around. So just managing costs there I think is a big opportunity as well. Adding value, it’s not something that I would carve out and say, we’re gonna charge you X per month for this, but as a bundle part of our bundled solution and our new, as a service offering, this is critical.

And then packaging those modern workplace bundles that combine collaboration, security device management, ai. So again, for partners that are focused on the Microsoft ecosystem, there are tons and tons of opportunities to package those different solutions to assess the client’s usage and need, and then enhance their ability to grow their businesses by maybe adjusting the licensing, the [00:15:00] security, and maybe they need more collaboration and MDM and things like that.

So I think there’s a huge opportunity in 2026 for partners not to reinvent themselves, really rich, but to evolve and have a very different and distinct conversations when they’re conducting their strategic business reviews coming into the new year.

Rich: Yeah, I mean it, two of the three things you talk about there really aren’t giant leaps forward, right?

I, so cloud cost optimization is something that’s been on my mind a lot recently too. And I hope to write about it in channel Hall at some point soon. This whole Cloud finops kind of idea. I hope that at some point down the road in the not too distant future, that becomes almost table stakes for MSPs, but it really isn’t right now, and so there is an opportunity to differentiate a little bit if you have the right tools and you really have visibility into where the spending is happening to be the company that can paint a big complete picture [00:16:00] of that for a customer and help them economize. ’cause you’re absolutely right, just as.

We all have streaming TV subscriptions we’ve forgotten about at home. These businesses all have all sorts of subscriptions they’re paying for that they don’t know. And so if you’re the one who can economize, especially at the sort of economic moment that’s gonna be differentiating and the bundling, I mean that, that’s packaging, that, that’s something that has been important for MSPs as long as we can remember.

But there’s a particularly rich opportunity around that right now. Again, not a huge strategic shift. The closest thing to a huge strategic shift in there is this idea of AI adoption consulting. But I really do believe that’s where the AI biggest AI opportunity is for MSPs. I can’t remember if we talked about it on the show or not, but just within the last few weeks, I did an interview with Robert Johnston who runs the ad wo MDR business that enabled.

And he has this really useful distinction. [00:17:00] He likes to draw between AI in the business and AI as the business and AI in the business is using AI to be more operationally efficient. AI as the business is what you’re talking about. And that’s selling AI adoption consulting, helping businesses utilize AI to grow faster solve business needs, deliver outcomes, et cetera.

That in my mind the AI in the business is going to increase the bottom line, but AI as the business is gonna grow the top line. And yes, there is some skills acquisition that has to happen to do that, but that’s really what it’s gonna be about in ai, AI going forward for our audience.

Erick: Yeah, appreciate that insight, rich.

And I really do like that AI in the business and as the business because ultimately what we’re trying to. Accomplish, as an MSP community for our clients is to be to, to the perception to shift from being a cost [00:18:00] center, to a profit center, and to a business accelerator center, right?

So if we’re doing cost optimization we’re consulting on AI and getting the and helping the business get more out of the data and make better decisions and don’t make silly mistakes and find opportunities for sales and marketing and growth and things like that. That definitely helps us be seen as a more strategic partner that is a profit and growth accelerator for our clients.

And that’s what we wanna be.

Rich: All right. With that folks, we are gonna take a quick break. When we come back on the other side, we’re gonna be joined by Elizabeth Dier and Tim Coogan of Cisco. She runs the partner program over there. Tim Coogan is her boss. They’re the two people at one of the largest tech vendors in the world who are most responsible for the Cisco 360 partner program that rolls out in January.

They’re gonna talk to us about that program, about the thinking behind it, the design principles, the pretty central [00:19:00] role that MSPs and managed services thinking played as they were designing that product. And then we’re gonna have a bit of a conversation with them more broadly about what Cisco 360 says about what MSPs want and need more broadly from partner programs right now.

It’s a very interesting conversation as well as the timely one. Stick around, we’ll be right back.

And welcome back to part two of this episode of the MSP Chat podcast. I don’t need to tell the folks in our audience that Cisco’s 360 Cisco 360 Partner Program newly revised is very much on the minds of one of the biggest vendors in the channel right now. And so Erick and I could not be more delighted to have literally the two best people on planet Earth to talk about that partner program and other issues around it.

Join us here on the show. They are Elizabeth Dab Lear, senior Vice President of the [00:20:00] Cisco Partner Program, and Tim Coogan, senior Vice President of Global Partner Sales at Cisco. Welcome both of you to the show.

Tim: Thank you so much for having us.

Rich: Now Elizabeth has actually been on the show before.

We recently celebrated episode 100, OFM SP Chat. Elizabeth was on episode 34, and I’m sure the hardcore MSP chat audience remembers everything about her. But for the few folks out there who have forgotten, just refresh their memory on what you do at Cisco.

Elisabeth: Great to be here. So my name is Elier, so as you can hear maybe I’m from Belgium and I lead the Cisco partner program, which as you just mentioned, it’s undergoing a major transformation.

We have launching Cisco 360 partner program at the end of January 26, and I work for Tim Cogan.

Rich: Tim, this is your first time on the show. Tell folks a little bit about yourself and your role at Cisco.

Tim: I will, but congratulations on a hundred episodes guys. That’s fantastic. So we’re excited for [00:21:00] you.

So again, I’m Tim Coogan, the Senior Vice President of Cisco’s Global Partner Sales organization. I have been in this role only for about 120 days. But I’ve been at Cisco for nearly 26 years. Almost all of which, not all, almost all of which prior to this role was in our portfolio field sales organization in the Americas.

Rich: Okay. Obviously we wanna get into some of the specifics around Cisco three 360. But before we do that, let’s just take a step back. What was the thinking inside Cisco? Why did you folks think now is the time to rethink that partner program a little bit, and what were your objectives going into that process?

Tim: So maybe I’ll take a first stab at it. But then you’ve got the expert in the form of Elizabeth. And so when you ask, why the market was dictating that we do something different the pace of change that we’re all seeing is such that, having a program. And we were very proud of the program that we’re evolving from.

VIP is in its 23rd year, it’s [00:22:00] 46th iteration. And we’re so proud of the enduring value that it’s brought to our partner community. But the market has dictated that we do a better job of matching capabilities to the rewards, to matching the investment that our partner community makes in the value and the outcomes that technology can deliver.

And it just required us to rethink how we invest and reward and incent our partners. So really the market dictated that the timing was right to make a change.

Elisabeth: Yeah I’ll maybe just add to that. I think first of all, it’s anchored on customer value, right? So we really want to make sure we enable and reward and identify the most capable partners to be able to realize the best outcome for our customers.

So capable partners, customer value. And ultimately, and that’s also really important I think for our MFP partners is sales alignment. And I think that’s also why we’re very excited with Tim Kogan as our leader, because he comes from portfolio sales and seller alignment is a very big [00:23:00] topic for us. We want to make sure that we have a perfect partnership between our sellers, our partners to then be able to realize customer value.

Erick: Now you’ve collected a lot of input from partners in developing and designing the new program. The channel has changed. Partners have changed over the last, 20 years since, we’ve all been around. What did you learn from partners in terms of what they want today versus what they may have wanted in the past, what you thought they wanted in the past from Cisco and potentially other vendors?

Elisabeth: I can start, I think the first thing, and that’s not necessarily new. They want help with managing complexity, right? And they want us to be as easy as possible to do business with. So I think that was already the case in the existing program and it’s definitely something we are [00:24:00] on an ongoing basis trying to refine and address in the new program as well.

And we’ve actually specifically actioned concrete feedback from partners as and when we were going through the co-design process to adjusting things in, for example, the way we measure partner value in the way we design the digital partner experience, et cetera. So that’s very consistent. I think the other thing is that ultimately.

We all want profitable growth. So that’s still a number one priority and continues to be as well. And so making sure we can help our partners to transition and make sure they can still drive profitability is really important. And again, very excited about the opportunity with managed services ’cause that precisely drives more customer val, more customer value, more stickiness and hence profitable and durable growth as well.

Tim: Yeah, and I may just chime in on that same vein. I think what our partners want from us is agility. They want to know that they’ve got an OEM partner that recognizes that. Customer [00:25:00] acquisition de styles and modes have changed. And I think that our managed service community is so critical because we hear from our customers that they wanna purchase things differently.

The old model still works in terms of it being a traditional, CapEx acquisition. But more and more we hear from customers that they wanna buy things differently. And I think that our managed service partners need to be, need to rely on their OEM partners to be equally agile.

Erick: Yeah’s nodding my head there on everything both of you said, we yeah, we understand and agree that MSPs are a little bit different, their customers are different.

The market is shifting and changing how folks buy, how they make their decisions is different. So it’s great to hear that’s being considered and incorporated into your new strategy for partners and partner growth.

Rich: And in fact it brings up something that I wanted to ask about.

I, the first conversation with a Cisco executive, I remember having about MSPs as a distinct subsection of the channel with its [00:26:00] own needs was in 2022 at the Cisco Live conference. It’s an interview I remember in part because about four days later, I tested positive for COVID. And ever since I’ve been worried that I infected the executive who I was actually interviewing about this topic.

The other reason I remember it is this, you folks were pretty early in the Ms P journey at that time. You had made a serious commitment at the corporate level to get serious about MSPs, but it was still pretty early on. So talk a little bit that, that’s like spring of 2022. Catch us up a little bit on the investments, the initiatives, some of the work that you’ve done in the last two and a half years now.

To really follow up on that interest in MSPs.

Tim: Yeah. And so I’ll start and I know Elizabeth will have a comment as well. I think our approach to managed services, early was let’s pick the one or two things that we are most comfortable with and allow those to ease into that managed service environment.

I think the posture that we have now in the difference that I’m very proud of is that we’re now comprehending [00:27:00] even a new product launch with an eye towards how will it eventually either immediately or eventually fit into our managed service portfolio that’s delivered from our partners. So we’re not just taking existing products and making them available to the managed service community.

I be, we’re incorporating that thought process in the concept commit motion inside of Cisco to say how will this new device fit nicely into managed services? Because quite honestly, I don’t know that I see any part of the portfolio. That isn’t a part of the managed service conversation over time. And so I think that’s a really a key difference, not just one or two things, but really, quite frankly, the entire portfolio, at least in some evolutionary concept towards managed services.

Elisabeth: Yeah. And I think if you ask about the journey, I think in a couple of years ago when we started, we really wanted to double down and accelerate. So we started with that end to end approach which we call, and we still call it a [00:28:00] consistent strategy around platform preference and performance.

So we were working with the business entities on adjusting the portfolio to be managed services ready and friendly as well, which is what Tim is talking about. We’re also been working with our operations and IT in terms of being able to tag managed services report and measure. Obviously we worked on commercial models we’ve worked on programmatic pricing.

And we really were very focused end to end on enabling our MSP partners. And it became a very large portion of our overall ecosystem and our overall channel bookings. And so when we were designing the Cisco 360 partner program. Which is, we started a year and a half ago, obviously we made a very deliberate decision to embed the MSP motion in the program.

So our partner value index, which is one of the cornerstones of the new program that measures patent value is no longer treating managed services as a silo, but it’s fully embedded. And so partners that are [00:29:00] investing in managed services practice or that have managed services, they will be better off.

They will have a better position in terms of the way we designate them and the way we reward them, et cetera. So we really went from a more standalone focused initiative into something that is now embedded and immersed in everything we do.

Erick: And in fact Cisco has cited three core principles to the new program, one of which is all about managed services, where you state you’re recognizing where the market is going, right?

The managed service providers are the golden geese that I think everyone is trusting with our infrastructure and their strategy as a, as an SMB or amid or even enterprise organization through, through co-managed services today. But then also your your core, one of your core tenets is to compensate accordingly, compensating you accordingly.

So tell us why and how you built [00:30:00] managed services into the program as a core principle, is obviously inclusive of some of the things I’ve already mentioned, but what other things were going through your minds when you were designing it?

Tim: Hey, Erick, I’m gonna, Elizabeth’s gonna give you the detail on that, but I wanted to double down on it because you’re exactly right.

We think about the research that Ambi has done recognizing that as, as much as 34 or slightly over 34% of the partner opportunity is around managed services. It, it would be inherent upon us to, when we build a new program to comprehend that just based on the sheer size of the opportunity.

And I know Elizabeth will talk a little bit more about how we’ve built it in but we see the market and we believe the market is headed in that direction. Absolutely.

Elisabeth: Absolutely. And so as I said, I think one way is, so we have a way to measure what we call partners foundational capabilities.

And part of that is definitely managed services because that then helps with driving customer value which is of course better in terms of driving stickiness as well, right? So partner gets more rewards [00:31:00] and get better positioned in the program when they do that. At the same time we talk a lot about capable partners, but we allow partners and MSP partners to choose their own path.

So they can either go deep in the portfolio or they can go cross portfolio, and we have, we will reward partners either way, whether they want to be a niche player in a certain technology or a certain portfolio, whether they want the to expand as well. And I think back to this whole thing about complexity, especially our managed service channel they will ask us to make it as simple as possible and to help them manage complexity.

So we’ve done a big investment in partner experience AI enabled as well. And obviously that’s an ongoing investment as well. We’ve launched features and functionality in the course of September to help our partners to navigate the training and the enablement that is available and to help them guide into their differentiated value proposition and how they want to go into that journey and become as experienced and capable [00:32:00] as they want in a particular technology or across the board.

Tim: And I’ll do this. And it’s not just maybe just a quick add-on. It’s not even just what the customers are telling us, but we also hear what our partners are saying. And again, think about this, customers, five years ago they wanted to buy a switch or a firewall.

They don’t wanna buy a switch or a firewall. Now they wanna buy a solution that supports a secure AI infrastructure. They don’t want to support point products, they wanna support integrated solutions, and that requires a different go to market. So we’re hearing both from our customers and our partners that the traditional models, while maybe still in parts of the business, managed services, is clearly where the market is taking us.

Yeah.

I,

Erick: We’re selling and buying and selling outcomes now, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Rich: Yeah. And I think that’s gonna be actually a nice segue to something that I wanted to ask. So there are three core design principles to Cisco. 360. One of them is meeting the needs of MSPs. And it’s significant for us and our audience that it was [00:33:00] elevated to that level.

One of one of the top three. But I wanna hear your thoughts about the other two because they relate to something that we’ve talked about on the podcast before. I think they’re related to this idea that what end users want are solutions and outcomes as opposed to just products and and point systems.

One of those is lifecycle value creation. The other of the three principles is showcasing ecosystem power. And both of those I think, go to this idea that the folks at amia who you named before, talk about a lot, that there are a bunch of different touch points along the life cycle of a client relationship where partners are contributing, influencing, supporting, selling, et cetera.

And it takes that whole ecosystem, that whole team of people to actually deliver the sale and satisfy the client. So talk a little bit more about why the other two of the three core principles here beyond the MSP one were the lifecycle and the ecosystem.

Elisabeth: Yeah, no, I would argue that to some degree [00:34:00] related as well, right?

Because lifecycle and managed services are very intertwined in terms of the way they manage customer value along the journey. First of all, I think the Omnia study was really interesting to us and it proves the point we’ve been hearing and understanding from our partners for quite a few years.

The six multiply right of fact that for every dollar of Cisco product service of software sold within a matter of three years, our expert partners that are typically the ones that have invested in managed services and or lifecycle can multiply by six. So that’s really important and powerful as well.

At the same time, we know that the majority of profitability of a partner comes from services, all kinds of services, managed services, professional services, et cetera, and only a really small portion comes from rebate. For those expert partners, the ones that are most sophisticated and well-versed in customer success and lifecycle, and then managed services at the same time.

We know [00:35:00] that from that study, 34% of these services are managed and only 8% is adopt. So in our program we are very much incentivizing and rewarding the investment in lifecycle, which is linked to managed services. So you get extra points if you’re investing in managed services, but also very much the investment in onboarding and adopting and ultimately renewing as well.

So that’s one principle.

Erick: Yeah. We typically see a lot of programs modernizing it to incentivize the activities along the way. And it sounds like that’s exactly what. What your new program is helping MSPs move toward more of that recurring revenue that, that, that builds more company value. As we know, there’s a lot of m and a activity going on in the channel.

So all these things are resonating with MSPs as well as something that you announced that partner Summit, I’m sure which is the multi-tenancy [00:36:00] capability now available in Cisco security Cloud control. So can you walk us through what’s new there and how how much your partners were asking for that for that functionality.

Tim: Yeah, so I’ll jump on that in a sec, but I wanted to come back just really quickly to the concept around adoption and lifecycle. ’cause I think you, you hit it, but you made me think of something Erick, when you were talking about that. D. We attach too much value, and this is gonna sound odd, coming from a guy that was in sales for 25 plus years.

We apply too much of the value that we bring to our customers into the sale. That’s not where we deliver value. Value comes from using what we’ve sold. And that’s why managed service, why adoption and lifecycle is so absolutely critical. It’s because that’s where the real value comes from. It’s when I take what I’ve purchased and I find a way to give myself a competitive differentiation.

I find a way to drive a different outcome. We mentioned it earlier, I drive a value proposition because, our customers are generally [00:37:00] not in the switch and router business. They’re in the, what do you do with switches and routers business. And we wanna help them get to that even quicker. I just thought that was a really important point that you made and I wanna, wanted to double down on that.

Erick: I

Tim: appreciate that. And apologize. Tell me what the question was around cloud control.

Erick: So the addition having the multi-tenancy functionality now. Which is something that we feel is kinda like table stakes now for msp just identifying that you announce it and is there anything new, unique and different about that?

Or, and was the, you’re listening to partners, were they really after, Hey, we need this because we need to manage all these different clients in a single pane of glass. Being a recovering MSP, I know how important that is to, to an MSP or to a, a technician having to manage, tons and tons of different workloads.

Tim: And so I’ll tell you what, while I believe we bring our twist to multi-tenancy, I think what it really points to, and it’s a comment that I had made earlier, it’s us listening. We recognize that we needed to be able to provide that to our managed service partners [00:38:00] because that’s what the market was demanding.

And so while I always am very proud of us bringing a unique, twist or concept, I think it was just quite honestly listening, adapting our portfolio to the needs of our partners and our customers. And I think that’s what separates maybe the Cisco of today versus the Cisco of, five years ago or certainly 25 years ago, is that we understand that we’ve gotta be, agile and adapt to this marketplace.

Elisabeth: Yeah. And I can only confirm that yes, it was very much asked for by our MSPs. I think it’s something that has been, needed and required for a while. So we were very excited about this announcement. At the same time, it also speaks to our bes designing in much more with the specific routes to market.

And then specifically MSP in mind, I think G two Patella, our Chief product officer is very committed to the MSP route and opportunity as well, so that’s very exciting as well. So it’s not an afterthought, it’s embedded in the product development.

Erick: I can’t tell you how much that resonates with me and my fellow active [00:39:00] MSPs now.

Rich: Obviously Cisco and Cisco 360 are very much top of mind for the channel right now. It’s one of the reasons we were very excited to have you on the show. But as I hinted at earlier on, the other thing is we have devoted some time on this podcast within the last few months to the way that changes going on in the channel are affecting what partners want from a partner program and how vendors are constructing partner programs in response to that.

And you guys have put a lot of time and effort into thinking about exactly those two issues and collecting feedback on that. So for the vendor portion of our audience here, the folks who are maybe at an early stage in rethinking their partner program what kind of lessons learned, what kind of advice do you have for other vendors in the industry right now on what they need to be doing as they think about or rethink their partner program?

Tim: You want to start, Tim, or do you want I’m gonna, I’m gonna take a risk here and I’m [00:40:00] gonna start with a little sarcasm. I think our, the other vendors in the industry should stay exactly the way they are. I think they’re doing it perfectly. And I’m joking, but I think the bottom line is I think if you listen to your customer and you listen to your partner, and Elizabeth and her team have been so thoughtful and committed to the concept of co-designing.

And I come from the other side of the table, to some degree, partners don’t work for us. We work together to bring value to our common customers. And my approach to that is you earn that every day. I earn the right to work with partners. They grant me the right to work with them if I think like they do, how do we grow together?

How do we become profitable? How do we deliver value to our common customers? And I think that the only way that you get to that. By listening, by asking questions with the intent to really understand what the person on the other side needs. And that’s the same as for a customer in my old job. And it’s the same for a partner in, in my current [00:41:00] job.

If you ask a genuine question and listen intently, I think the path forward becomes almost obvious. And I think we really were diligent about that. And I’m so proud of the work that Elizabeth and her team did. ’cause we didn’t just ask the questions, we made the questions, the answers to those questions, a reality.

And it, I think it’s reflected in the thoughtfulness of the program.

Elisabeth: Yeah, I think the only thing I would add is the concepts of agile development and design thinking. I’m a very strong believer that in today’s environment it would be very arrogant and misplaced to think that anyone is able to, design a program in a vacuum, let’s say. So I always knew, and I always said this to the partners as well, it’s not about being right, it’s about landing it in the right way. And so we went into a very deliberate I guess also very vulnerable process because we exposed our mistakes and our, I used to joke in the beginning of the program that what sounded great on a PowerPoint may be a complete disaster if you, once you implement, right?

So we went [00:42:00] through a very deliberate effort to release as much as we could and fail fast. And we do lots of fast failing but very deliberately also. And with hindsight, sometimes partners said it was very chaotic and we started feeling a little bit stressed out. And, but then if you say, I could have just stayed quiet and then come out with a new program three months before launch, and then of course, that’s not what they would’ve liked either, right? So yes, it was a little bit of a messy, I always said controlled chaos type of process. But I would always do it again because, and then I think the other piece I would want to add, and Tim talks about agility already.

This whole point about six months is long term, and three months is, things, the world changes so fast that whatever you do, it needs to build in enough flexibility so that you can keep adjusting and keep iterating and keep improving, because whatever you do will have to be adjusted.

We haven’t discussed AI yet, but that’s just a beautiful example of the need to [00:43:00] be agile.

Erick: You just discussed it right there. We, I was waiting for the AI word to come up, but, no, we’re, our hats off. Our hats are off to you, and we know how difficult it is. It’s a journey, right?

Not a destination. And to continue to evolve and to listen and be vulnerable and to get, the engineers to, not fall in love with their ideas so much. So they can’t, appreciate what needs to happen. I’m an engineer, so I can speak about it. But the launch of Cisco 360 is January 25th, so exciting, right?

Q1 January. What should partners and other interested parties be doing between now and then to prepare for the launch and to take advantage of it?

Elisabeth: I can start. So we very deliberately started with what we call pre-launch in August. So partner since August can engage with us, right? So through our platform, the partner experience platform, they can engage and they can see a journey.

[00:44:00] So they can, whether they’re a new partner or an existing partner, they can go through learning paths, which are simplified, aggregated journeys that allow them to choose. Technologies they want to prioritize and invest in. And as they go through that journey they can get points and they can see how they’re thriving in the new program.

And all of that is visible in that partner experience platform. And even better, we have an AI assistance in September that helps guide that experience through the platform and through the journey here. And obviously, as I said, it’s all agile, so we will keep improving and adjusting as we progress. So I would say lean in, engage through the experience.

Or if you have a contact at Cisco, of course that’s possible too. Or you can just contact us as well, we can help you further in terms of going through the journey and seeing how you do. We also have a, an estimator now that helps you to calculate profitability in the new program which we’re very excited about as well.

And that’s the best advice because then you can maximize your position and your [00:45:00] chances for great success already well in advance.

Tim: And I would add to that is that the vast majority of our partners have embraced this journey since, since Cisco 360, was announced over a year ago at the partner summit a year ago.

But I would say that for a partner, if they’re, if they don’t know what to do, and this is, if a partner that’s global or local, they are single architecture or portfolio, they are large or small. If they don’t know what to do, every person at Cisco is prepared to help them. We have a path for all partners to maximize their re rewards and incentives based on their investment.

And we’ve got a path for them to maintain and or grow their profitability with us. And we’re very proud of how inclusive the program is. And so if a partner doesn’t know what to do, that’s exactly why we exist. We exist to show them that path forward to profitability and to growth. And so if you, if they don’t know, just ask us and we will absolutely help them build a program.[00:46:00]

Rich: Well, Tim Elizabeth very interesting, very timely obviously conversation. We thank you both for carving out some time to come on the show with us here. For folks in the audience who wanna get in touch with you follow up on something you said here, or they just wanna find, like the estimator, some of the resources you guys were talking about.

Where should they go?

Elisabeth: They can look on cisco.com. There is a dedicated Cisco 360 partner program page. And from there, there is the journey into the how to start and how to engage and then ultimately how to thrive in the program. Right?

Erick: Something tells me that the profitability forecast tool is gonna be very heavily, inspected by MSPs moving forward. Absolutely we love those types of tools, calculators. Yeah. Tell us how much money we’re leaving on the table and how much we can pick up, by leveraging a program like this.

Tim: Absolutely.

Rich: Alright Elizabeth dda Lee, Tim Cogan, thank you so much for joining [00:47:00] us on Ms.

P Jack. Folks, Erick and I are gonna take a quick break here. We come back on the other side, we’re gonna share some final thoughts about this conversation with Cisco. Have a little fun wrap up the show. Stick around. We’re gonna be right back.

And welcome back to part three of this episode of the MSP Chat podcast. Once again, a big thank you to Tim Coogan and Elizabeth Dier for making some time for us. End of the quarter, end of the year, giant partner program rollout just weeks away. So we appreciate them making some time for us. Lots of things we could dive into about that conversation.

Erick, two things occurred to me. I mentioned it’s I’ve been talking to folks at Cisco about MSPs and and the company getting serious about MSPs for years at this point. And, it’s been a process basically. It’s not like things changed there overnight. They were really in, when I had my first conversation [00:48:00] about this, they were really just figuring out who MSPs are.

How their needs differ from the rest of the partner base and so on. I’m remembering, so that was 2022. Late in 2023, I’m at the Cisco Partner Summit and Chuck Robbins, the CEO, is on stage saying per the conversation we just had, where we are building MSP considerations into everything we do and sell, that for me was a big milestone moment that, okay, now I know they’re serious about this because the CEO’s talking about it in his one and only opportunity to speak with partners every year, a big deal.

And now we’re really seeing it. Cisco 360 because this is, long in the works, long in the making. They’re not gonna be revising the partner program to this degree anytime soon. Three design principles go into it. And one of them is making sure that this works for MSPs. That tells you a lot about how they’re thinking at Cisco right now.

And then the other thing that just struck me is how often agility came up in this [00:49:00] conversation and for a company the size of Cisco to be thinking about keeping up with the market and not falling behind, not allowing bureaucracy and inertia prevent us from giving partners and end users what they need.

That’s a good thing. I think that’s a healthy mindset.

Erick: My hat’s off to Cisco because I can, I feel a lot more confident now, rich, that MSPs have arrived now, and and maybe some of our listeners know my journey in the channel, began, in 2000 initially in 1997, started an IT practice in 2004, started delivering what we called flat rate IT services.

And then that evolved into managed services and and those early days, rich, when we were, helping pioneer the tip of the Spear U you know, on the channel side, on the, reporting on the channel and interviewing tons and tons of vendors and partners and me executing through our MSP practice and then also coaching and consulting with tons and tons of MSPs, especially, through MSP University after we [00:50:00] sold the MSP practice.

There were a few big vendors that, were trying to figure this thing out. We were engaged with Microsoft, we were engaged with Cisco in the early days, and a lot of these top tier vendors were, they were, they’re just it was hard for them to pivot and make that shift. And, they tried and we saw different variations of programs.

The good news is over the years, the vendors have really started understanding the Ms P model much more clearly and seeing the value that MSPs bring to their clients and the communities that they serve and the vendor relationships that they build. And we went from buying, having to buy a thousand or 2000 licenses of, an agent.

When we started trying to figure out our, this model to now, channel programs are built around MSP’s needs. Pricing is MSP Friendly. They’re aligning with how MSPs, build their clients and helping the industry grow. I always, I like to say, if I were to start [00:51:00] over today, it would be a lot easier for me to get an MSP practice up and running.

The challenge would be the competition, right? Because that’s something that we a lot more MSPs around now than when I started, right? So when I say MSPs have arrived, I’m also taking note of what you recognize is that Cisco is a big giant organization for them to be agile and, focus the last several years on developing this program that, focuses as one of the pillars specifically on helping MSPs grow.

That’s, that to me is planning a flag and saying, all right, everybody, we’re leading in this direction, let’s get it done. Partners. That is to me, a signal that says, all right, this is something that we now have shifted completely from MSPs, trying to get vendors and distributors to understand, how we wanna work and negotiate terms to where vendors are [00:52:00] taking the initiative.

Cisco’s taking the initiative to understand the MSP channel, what drives, what helps, what benefits those partners, and supporting that growth through this program. Yeah, this is great news.

Rich: Yeah, no, and it’s a great point. There are lot of vendors out there who are very much interested in, focused on the MSP right now creating MSP tracks in their partner programs, et cetera.

But when a company the size of Cisco gets this focused, this serious about MSPs, it is a moment for the whole managed services model that’s worth calling out.

Erick: For the whole industry, candidly. Yeah. ’cause the statistics that were shared during that call, the revenue that MSPs generate, the value that they bring is not going unnoticed.

Yeah. It’s it’s a new era. And now as we’re aligning towards, the next evolution of, the services that MSPs will be bundling and selling to their clients we’re we’ll we’re, we are well supported.

Rich: Indeed. [00:53:00] And that observation leaves us with time for just one last thing, and if I use the term jailbreak with you, you’re probably thinking about break out.

This particular story comes to us from the Lee Correctional Institution in South Carolina, and it concerns a break in a guard found a a package in the prison yard containing steak. Weed, crab, legs, cigarettes, and a tin of old Bay. As far as folks can work out a drone dropped this package, this parcel in the prison yard where somebody a an inmate was supposed to discover it and I guess have themselves a little bit of part a party there, a steak weed grab lead cigarette at seasoned with Old Bay kind of party.

Did not work out. The guards found the stuff before the the prisoner managed to write there. I’m looking at that list Erick, and if I’m a prisoner and I have [00:54:00] the opportunity to have something brought to me by drone steak, okay. There, there’s a refrigeration issue there that you have to figure that one out.

But I, crap, legs, cigarettes, old Bay, probably not high on my personal list.

Erick: Yeah, I wonder if that was like the Christmas list request from the inmate over the phone. I need gimme some crab legs, gimme some steak. Give me, a pound of weed and a tin of obe. Don’t worry, I’ve already got the the toilet gin handled for the party.

We’re good.

Rich: I better wishes for whoever was supposed to get that package for the for the holidays. Sorry it didn’t work out for you. And folks, that is all the time we’ve got for you on this episode of MSP Chat. We thank you very much for joining us. We will see it again in, in a week’s time with another episode.

Until then, I’ll just remind you, as I always do, this is both a video and an audio podcast, which means if you’re listening to us right now. But would like to check us out on video, go to YouTube, look up MSP Chat if [00:55:00] you’re watching us on YouTube, but you’re into audio podcasts as well. Go to Apple, Google, Spotify.

Wherever you get your audio podcast, you’re probably gonna find MSP chat there as well. And wherever it is you find us, please subscribe, rate review. It’s gonna help other people discover and enjoy the program just like you do. This program is produced by the Great Press Johns. It is edited by the also great Riley Simpson.

They’re both part of the team with us here at Channel Master. It can create a podcast for you if you’d like that. But what we really excel at doing at Channel Master is helping vendors build, grow, and optimize MSP channels. You can learn more about our various services along those lines at www.channel master.com.

Channel Master has a sister organization called MSP Master, that’s Erick working one-on-one with MSPs to help them grow and optimize their business. You can learn more about that. www.mspmaster.com. So once again, we thank you for joining us. We’ll see you in a week. Until then, folks, please [00:56:00] remember you can’t spell channel without MSP.