Cisco’s restructured 360 Partner Program accelerates AI readiness with new incentives and resources

Cisco unveils a revamped 360 Partner Program designed to streamline partner engagement, incentivise AI-driven solutions, and bolster collaboration, aiming to meet surging customer demand for AI readiness amid rapid technological shifts.

Cisco has introduced the Cisco 360 Partner Program, a reworked partner framework intended to help its channel navigate the rapid shift to artificial intelligence by simplifying engagement models and sharpening routes to revenue. According to Cisco’s announcement, the programme was co-designed with partners over 15 months and aims to equip resellers, managed service providers, consultants and developers to deliver outcomes across AI-ready data centres, modern workplaces and digital resilience.

Cisco says the initiative brings clearer partner designations and tools to make it easier for customers to identify suitable expertise. All participants will be recognised as registered Cisco Partners, while higher tiers, Cisco Portfolio Partners and Cisco Preferred Partners, signal deeper sales and technical capability, lifecycle practices and end-to-end delivery experience. The company has also launched a Partner Locator to help customers search across portfolios including Security, Networking, Collaboration, Services, Splunk and Cloud and AI Infrastructure.

The vendor frames the programme around predictable profitability for partners through a consolidated incentive structure called the Cisco Partner Incentive (CPI). Cisco describes CPI as a streamlining of prior elements to give partners clearer, more predictable earnings and to align partner go-to-market efforts with Cisco’s own roadmap. Cisco has updated tools such as the Partner Incentive Estimator to reflect new incentive rates and to model next‑generation specialisation bonuses.

Several temporary bonus elements have been publicised to accelerate partner adoption of “One Cisco” specialisations, including Secure Networking and Secure AI Infrastructure. Cisco states those CPI bonuses are time-limited and will expire at the end of July 2026. The company has also signalled specific modelling changes in its estimator to show additional incentive rates for ThousandEyes and optics SKUs within relevant portfolios.

Beyond incentives, Cisco is expanding partner-facing resources intended to help partners differentiate and scale. The programme introduces Partner Value Indexes that will measure partner contributions across multiple dimensions and will add targeted indexes and learning paths for Developers/Advisors, Mass-Scale Infrastructure partners and Distributors. A new Distributor Development Fund and enhancements to the Cisco AI Assistant inside the Partner Experience Platform were also announced to support enablement and efficiency.

Cisco and partner executives emphasised the collaborative origin of the programme and its market intent. “With our partners, we’ve strengthened what is already a world-class ecosystem to deliver even greater value and help our mutual customers connect, protect and thrive”, said Tim Coogan, Senior Vice President of Global Partner Sales at Cisco. Elisabeth De Dobbeleer, Senior Vice President, Cisco Partner Program, said the initiative “was designed with partners to foster collective success, enable differentiation, and help partners scale with confidence. It’s about making our ecosystem’s unique value clear to the market and our customers”. Nicko Roussos, Senior Vice President, Cisco Strategy & Transformation, TD Synnex, added: “The Cisco 360 Partner Program helps us differentiate based on our expertise. We appreciate that we’re measured on the value we bring; that only benefits our mutual customers”.

Cisco positions the programme as a response to customer demand for AI readiness and to the channel’s role in delivering critical infrastructure, services and AI-native capabilities. According to Cisco’s public materials and blog commentary, the initiative is intended to lift partners’ market standing, align incentives with customer outcomes and create a more predictable path to growth as customers modernise for AI workloads. Partners can find more details on programme mechanics, incentive modelling and transition timelines via Cisco’s partner communications and the public partner programme resources.

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Source: Fuse Wire Services