Menlo Park, California-based Cisco Systems Inc has introduced a new channel certification programme to differentiate four separate levels of reseller. The four new tiers are Sales Partner, Service Partner, a Silver Certified Partner and a Gold Certified Partner. According to the company, Sale and Service Partners will deal with the demand for internetworking from smaller and medium-sized users, requiring quick service and a basic understanding of business and operational issues. Silver Partners will be orientated towards medium to large networks and offer internetworking expertise and services for configuring, installing, supporting and maintaining Cisco router networks. Gold Partners will be suppliers for large, mission-critical, international networks. Such organisations will already have experience of managing large internetworks and will offer a broad range of services from architectural design and smart installation to around-the-clock support functions, according to a Cisco spokesman. Certification will be based on the level of expertise each partner brings to selling and supporting Cisco technology and the level of service they offer customers, says the company. Cisco will oversee the qualification process and says it has invested millions of dollars in providing additional resources for its partners, including training programmes, to implement the strategy. The initiative will be global, with Europe the first area to roll-out the programme in April or May and the US following next quarter. In Europe, the company says that none of its partners will initially qualify for Gold status, although it expects some – albeit less than 20% – to achieve this standard within a year; Silver Partners are expected to account for 50-60% of its total resellers within the same timeframe. The accreditation process will be free to all channels, says the company.
