Cisco Canada realigns its channel team

SAN DIEGO — Now that Cisco Systems merged Canada with the U.S. theatre, the Canadian subsidiary has gone one step further and also realigned its channel into four sub-groups.

Ross Pellizzari, Cisco’s vice-president of Canadian channel operations, said it was clear from partner feedback that the subsidiary needed to understand the business better.

The four sub-groups make up Cisco’s entire Canadian channel of 1,600 plus partners. The first group consists of large national partners and will be managed by Paul Semak. Group two will be made up of 20 high-growth partners managed by Lisa Pulcini. The third group is devoted to its largest partner Bell Business Solutions and called the Bell Channel Group.Currently the company is looking for a manager to handle it. The largest group, headed by Rick Graham, area vice-president for channels, includes partners who go through distribution.

“We have a national team with a different go-to-market approach than the others. It is 90 per cent of the volume we do. Rick’s group had 50 per cent of handled by Ingram Micro and Tech Data so it is a bit of a double-dip,” Pellizzari said.

Graham’s team provides the channel for Cisco’s commercial business. “It is the hottest growing market and we are investing in the channel from a business head count and through educational programs,” he added.

Meanwhile, Cisco will roll out over the next year an offer-based channel program that will see its current resale channel plan split into four areas. Those are: Local resale, global resale, managed service network, and outsourcing.

These new plans will compliment the current VIP, SIP and OIP incentive plans, according to Keith Goodwin, Cisco’s senior vice-president for worldwide channels.

T.C. Doyle, a channel analyst from Amazon Consulting, said the branching of the standard resell channel plan takes a very specific go to market initiative to a new level. Cisco will be among the first to recognize and reward partners that are new business models or business models that are challenging to bring into a traditional partner program, Doyle said.

“Outsourcing is tough and global guys who have a satellite office in Paris, but is based in Toronto may not have gold status in Paris. How do you build a program like that especially when a lot of the work is done in India, for example? So Cisco has come up with a program for these partners which differentiate the business models,” Doyle said.

In Canada, Pellizzari said the local resale offer program evolved. The global part of the plan those partners will focus on the global 1000 customers and they will get a different set of discounts.

“We have a huge appetite to work with those who want to provide managed services with the networked home and commercial business being growth areas today,” Pellizzari said.

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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Paolo Del Nibletto
Paolo Del Nibletto
Former editor of Computer Dealer News, covering Canada's IT channel community.

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