Cisco partners tell CRN that the transition away from the lucrative VIP incentive structure has made Cisco Partner Incentive (CPI) optimization critical to their margins within the newly launched Cisco 360 partner program.
The move to CPI has put profitability under a microscope and has replaced what many Cisco partners viewed as the most lucrative and predictable incentive program. Three months into the new program, many partners are still learning how CPI replaces VIP economically, solution providers told CRN.
“Our minds have now turned to CPI and how we’re going to optimize CPI and identify our rebates. VIP was our most profitable program, and so how CPI replaces it exactly—that’s the critical thing,” one executive for a longtime Cisco partner told CRN under the condition of anonymity.
[Related: Cisco’s Move To Eliminate Compute Deal Registration Sparks Channel Turmoil]
Cisco 360, launched in January, eliminated the once-separate partner programs and incentives such as VIP—the company’s flagship rebate incentive program—as well as Perform Plus and the Cisco Services Partner Program, or CSPP. These have instead been consolidated into a single structure, CPI, which is rewarding partners with rebates as they land, adopt, expand and renew hardware, software and services, according to Cisco.
While VIP was widely viewed as the strongest revenue driver for partners, the goal of CPI is to simplify past program elements while offering partners clearer, more predictable earnings across Cisco’s portfolio, according to the San Jose, Calif.-based tech giant.
CPI represents one component of Cisco’s new partner program, with the Partner Value Index (PVI) serving as the primary measurement framework. Partners now receive PVI scores ranging from zero to 10 across several core architectures, including security, networking, collaboration, services, Splunk, cloud and AI infrastructure. CPI benefits start at a score of 5 or above, according to Cisco.
Another important goal of CPI is to help partners plan for growth by aligning their own forecasts and strategies with Cisco’s road map, Cisco said. Perhaps most critical for the tech giant in recent years has been shifting its customers to favor adopting more software and services over hardware.
That transition is baked into CPI’s incentive model, which one MSP partner said marks a clear break from transaction‑driven rewards.
“What Cisco has attached to CPI is paying or rewarding partners for performance, not for transactions. I’m actually celebrating that because there is the cross section of Cisco partners that are super transactional, and that that comes at a cost or a negative to us,” said the MSP executive and Cisco partner.
The MSP’s intent is not to be a transactional company, the executive added.
“Then, we end up having to go to battle with transactional partners because we’re given the same pricing, but our cost model is higher because of the way we’re going to market. This way is actually better long term,” the executive said.
Cisco is still working out the kinks in reporting around CPI, however, which can introduce new financial risk for unprepared partners, the executive said.
“The biggest challenge has been as Cisco has worked on reporting around the data that we need on the back end. They’ve done a really good job of building up PXP [the Partner Experience Platform], but we need more. We need more data. We need more access. I need very specific details of, ‘Where is my rebate coming from, and how am I going to grow that?’” the executive said.
Cisco’s Higher Specialization Hurdles Signal A More Elite Partner Roster, Say Solution Providers
Partners say Cisco’s revamped specialization framework is designed to be difficult—that’s the point.
Cisco Preferred partners are eligible to earn two new specializations that the company revealed in January: Secure AI Infrastructure and Secure Networking. The new specializations, particularly for Secure Networking, will require deep audits of technical capabilities and go-to-market execution, creating a deliberate barrier to entry, partners said.
Cisco appears intent on narrowing the field to partners that can prove sustained expertise rather than offering broad, badge-based differentiation, one Cisco partner executive said.
“It’s a heavy lift for most partners, but it’s intentional,” the executive said. “They don’t want everybody to be specialized.”
Even so, partners say Cisco’s partner program moves are being closely watched across the ecosystem as rivals revisit and refine their own channel strategies. Networking player Extreme Networks in January revealed its new partner program a week before Cisco 360’s launch and Palo Alto Networks rolled out its revamped partner program in February.
“Everybody’s watching Cisco,” the executive said. “They’re the elephant in the room, and what they do next will shape how the channel moves.”
