Cisco Channel Chief Rodney Clark On Cisco 360’s ‘Co-Design’ Phase And The ‘Rebranding’ Of Cisco Partners

‘This is me speaking from a leader’s experience with change. Any time you change something that’s been around as long as this, 50/50 love it and 50/50 don’t at best. … We made a commitment early on to really rebrand what it means to be a Cisco partner,’ Cisco Channel Chief Rodney Clark tells CRN about Cisco 360, the overhauled partner program launching in early 2026.

Cisco Systems Channel Chief Rodney Clark and his team have been hard at work building out Cisco 360, the company’s soon-to-be fully revamped partner program that he debuted in late 2024 as a program built “by partners, for partners.”

To that end, San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco is working closely with partners and taking in feedback to update the iconic partner program so that it rewards partners for the value they bring rather than simply transacting. Cisco in March released details around the timing of some of the changes that would be coming to the program, including the Cisco Services Partner Program (CSPP) payouts that are being adjusted and the Monthly Value Rebate for Cisco Success Tracks that will be retired come July 27, Clark told CRN at the time. The company will then introduce the Cisco Partner Incentive (CPI) in February 2026, which will replace multiple siloed partner programs and incentives such as VIP, Perform Plus and CSPP. These will be folded into the CPI, which will mirror the overall value index that will measure partners across four areas: foundational, capabilities, performance and engagement, Clark said.

At Cisco Live 2025 last week, Clark, whose title is senior vice president of partnerships and small and medium business, shared more long-awaited program updates with CRN around the launch of a profitability estimator coming later this month, the redefining of partners as Cisco is slated to drop the Gold-level designation, and the opportunities that he sees for partners around agentic AI and AI-ready data centers, with incentives to match.

Here are the latest details on the highly anticipated Cisco 360 partner program launching early next year that partners need to know.

What is the status of the Cisco 360 partner program that’s launching in February 2026?

Since we launched in November, we’ve been in this pretty heavy co-design phase with partners. Truly living up to built by partners, for partners. And the feedback that we’ve gotten is, ‘Great, now we need to turn the corner.’ So we’re taking it from here, continuing to take input and feedback, obviously, but now looking at the stakes that we put in the ground for the program and, ultimately, ‘What is the final design of our value index based on all the feedback that we’ve gotten?’ Not just the design and what we’re asking partners to do, but how do we measure that success? What does that look like? We’re taking into account things like now that we know based on the different product releases or platform releases what security is going to look like relative to networking, relative to collaboration and exploring different models and clusters of models to make sure that we’re rewarding a partner that’s relevant to the market in Vietnam as much as we are a partner that’s relevant to the market in New York. So all that stuff is kind of happening in the background. In June, we put a kind of a stake in the ground to say, ‘Here’s where we are.’ It’s also when we release the profitability estimator. That’s a big milestone for us. The internal teams are looking at it and working on it now, but that’s a big next step for us. And then, of course, the August milestone is when we then start evaluating and assessing where partners actually land that will then set their entry into Cisco 360, so a lot of work.

Also this month is when we will do the integration of [Splunk] Partnerverse into Cisco 360. We’ll take the house that is Partnerverse and move it to Cisco 360 Partner Avenue, and we’ll redefine some of the badging requirements into the CPI structure, and we’ll start showing partners the same way that we release security, the same way that we release collab, we’ll start showing them where they [land] on that. But for that Splunk partner who’s been on that partner-first Splunk journey, it’s going to look and feel the same. The same house on a different street.

Will the profitability estimator, also known to partners as ‘the calculator,’ serve as the key to helping partners determine how they will be valued as part of the new structure within Cisco 360?

Yes, the profitability estimator is pretty important for us. [Former CFO] Scott Heron and I stood up on the stage [at Partner Summit 2024] and said, ‘Hey, we will maintain our levels of investment in the partner ecosystem.’ So, a big proof point in that is showing partners where they land and helping model where they land based on all the changes. And so that’s us being, once again, open and transparent ... just to ensure that partners, as they have questions or they want to know and understand areas of investment they need to make to accelerate their profitability, we can have that conversation. We’re pretty excited about that.

What’s your message to partner organizations that are concerned about losing their Gold designation within the new partner program?

We made a commitment early on to really rebrand what it means to be a Cisco partner. As part of that, we want to ensure that customers know and understand what they are getting when they choose a Cisco partner. We just launched this massive customer campaign that’s going to run now through the launch of the Cisco 360 partner program in February called ‘Enter our Ecosystem,’ and we’ll be sharing directly with customers through social channels and every other way that we can what it means to be a competent, capable Cisco partner. And ultimately, when we get further into the campaign, how they choose that partner. That’s important, by the way. It’s the first time as a company we’ve ever done that kind of branding, and I would argue that there’s not many companies in the industry that have done that on behalf of the ecosystem. We’re super proud of that. And what it does then is it gives us a clean glide path into those concerns around public tenders and around RFPs and things like that [and] gives us the ability to then go to partners and say, ‘There is value in that, and this is the dollars and the time that we’ve invested in ensuring that our customers know how to choose,’ and so that’s a pretty big milestone for us. That just launched last week to all of our sellers, along with a kit on how to go and talk to their customers about it. So, it’s not only an external push; it’s an internal one for Cisco too.

We’re putting the investment behind branding. I say ‘rebranding,’ but we’ve really never done it, and now we get to go out and talk about what it means.

Some partners have expressed concerns with the level of details of the new program so far. What do you want partners to know about how Cisco will execute on the new program?

This is me speaking from a leader’s experience with change. Any time you change something that’s been around as long as this, 50/50 love it and 50/50 don’t at best. We’re collecting more sentiment on a more regular basis than we ever have. We’ve got more listening mechanisms. Forty percent of our partners, be they polled by us or third-party analysts, are saying, ‘We’re OK with it.’ About 37 percent are like, ‘We’re going to wait and see,’ and wait and see, by the way, is, ‘Tell me how much I’m going to make exactly.’ We’re going to answer that in the June time frame. Seven percent are [not happy]. Then there’s another small percentage that [say], ‘I don’t see any benefit.’ I’m actually OK with those percentages right now. I’d love to see that 37 percent grow into that 40 [percent] that are supportive, and we’re going to focus on that to make sure that happens, as well as making sure that we have a pathway for that 7 percent to be happy. Those percentages haven’t changed much. We’ve seen an increase in sentiment, but they haven’t changed much and so as we get closer, it’s something that the team is monitoring on a weekly basis.

The industry standard for a program of this magnitude; we’d be [first] announcing it right now, leading into a February launch. So we’ve got all of that work and insight behind us and the feedback is that it’s the right thing to do. I’m proud of the team that’s been driving it and, by the way, proud of the partners. We’ve got a really committed community in our advisory boards, in our executive exchange, and they’ve been very, very vocal on both sides and helping us get to this point.

What are the biggest opportunities facing partners right now?

There are three. The first one for me is the unified platform for Meraki and Catalyst. That’s huge and customers have been asking for that for a long time [and] our partners have been asking for that for a long time as well. Really looking at unifying cloud management across those two platforms; absolutely huge. Another area is the ongoing release of AI-ready data center solutions and AI pods. There’s a ton of energy because that supports our AI strategy, [which is] an ongoing investment. AI-ready data centers represent a way for [partners] to continue to scale in all different levels of infrastructure. The third one is the AgenticOps and AI Canvas. For me, this is an opportunity as we look at the shared workspace for different personas that sit within each of these organizations to come and understand what’s happening across their network and their infrastructure. This is a killer app, so to speak, for our partners, because it’s a pure managed services play. When we look at supporting our partners and their profitability, it’s not just the core set of hardware products. It’s, ‘Hey, what’s happening across our cloud portfolio, our AI portfolio?’ that’s going to allow them to build services. And this is the one that I actually was pretty excited about. [Partners] are really excited about that.

Will some of the new incentives be around areas of opportunity, such as AI-ready data centers or security?

Yes, you always want to be driving an incentive structure toward what customers are asking for in terms of value from partners, and for us getting that right is important. We’re taking VIP, Perform Plus and CSPP and collapsing that into a single incentive line called CPI, Cisco Partner Incentive. And it pays for things like adoption and renewal, as well as just a core landing of technology. Within that, we then get to really pinpoint our investments on accelerators. Meaning, data center-ready infrastructure solutions. We also then get to bring in opportunities to incent [across] architectures [of] our portfolio. We’ll have ways to reward partners who sell multiple of those solutions to address work in a workspace or an AI-ready data center that cuts across security, that cuts across networking. We’re really excited in this next phase, and CPI launches the same time that our Cisco 360 partner program launches in February [2026].

Is the goal of the new program to have specialized partners, or those that can go wide across Cisco’s portfolio?

That’s a really good question. The strength of Cisco is the breadth of the portfolio, and so we need a partner ecosystem that actually mirrors that. The reason that we’ve decided to go deep into specific architectures is so that we can ensure that we have the right level of capability to support us going broad across the portfolio. It’s an interesting route to get there, but the parallel I make is, you hear us talk about the three things around AI-ready data centers, future-proofing workspaces and resilience. Those things cut across all of our core areas of architecture. The only way that we can get there if we decide to do that in the future as a program for the ecosystem is if we first build up that specific capability within each of those areas. Our push this year is very intentional, which is we want the depth of capability. We want the customer life cycle through engagement. In other words, this framework that we have—the four areas or the value index—they have to balance across that so that then we can support cross-architecture. That’s our pathway to get there.

Will there be new education and training for partners as part of Cisco 360?

Yes, we’ve said all along that that enablement is the foundation to the success of our Cisco 360 partner program. You may remember, we announced an $80 million investment in enablement at Partner Summit through Cisco University and some other areas. That continues, and we’ll talk more as we get closer to Partner Summit [2025] about some of the additional investments that we’ve made. We have over 2,000 partners and 5,000 partner individuals that have gone through our AI Fundamentals course, [which is] something that we put out there early and we continue to iterate on that, and that same enablement was used internally. We’ve got 20,000 of our employees trained on that as well. It’s one of the first times that our partners and our core sellers are kind of pacing the same as it relates to AI. So yes, massive investment will continue to remain important for us and a priority and [there will be] a lot more to share in the coming months.

The main message has always been this [partner program] is built for them, by them, so that’s kind of the core thing. We’ve taken their input and feedback. It’s about delivering customer outcomes, and it’s about ensuring that we are helping them build the capability and, as a result, the longevity to be able to participate in the customer opportunity.