An opportunity to help you, our partners, grow your market share has emerged. By using a Cisco ONE software-led, go-to-market, strategy we will work together to unlock this opportunity. I am truly honored and excited to play a part in leading you in the development of Cisco ONE Software as the cornerstone of your business with us.

By deconstructing software and hardware, we are simplifying how you buy and sell software. How? With separate pricing options that provide incremental opportunities for you to drive a solution-centric, outcome-driven discussion with your customers. This new approach of separate pricing options for hardware and software has sprung a radical change, which provides incremental sales opportunities for you.

This further unlocks the potential of"services led" post sales engagements of lifecycle management, giving you insights and leads into newer areas of investment and technology spend by your customers. This perfectly aligns with our key objective of helping you expand your customer footprint and drive profitable growth. So let me share with you how does this new approach work for you and your customers' benefit.

Perpetual ownership

For a start, Cisco ONE provides the option to own the software assets of our offering for perpetuity. Thisisa shift from the current right of ownership of the software which is tied to the life of the hardware. The perpetual ownership of software eliminates the need to buy the software again at the time of refresh, substantially reducing complexity and cost.

We are cognizant of the altering technology consumption patterns of our customers, and therefore, in addition to the perpetual option we offer Cisco ONE in a subscription model and as an Enterprise wide licensing agreement (ELA). This empowers you as our partners to offer your customers the flexibility in consuming our software assets.

Access to innovation

In this connected age, technology obsolescence and new trends result in shorter product cycles that subsequently increase the pressure to innovate and to provide our customers with the most relevant offerings, which helps them retain their competitive edge in their business.

Organic and inorganic innovation is at the centre of our software transition. We have been adding new software assets to our product portfolio through a very carefully crafted acquisition strategy focussed on software companies in the area of IOT, Cloud, Collaboration, Analytics and Security. These software assets complement our product offers and make our Cisco ONE software strategy more compelling to our joint customers.

Our customers continually benefit from our innovation cycles that give them access to new features and functionalities. A case in point is the integration of our recent acquisitions Lancope and CliQr into our Cisco ONE software bundles.

This, coupled with our engineering innovation cycles, brings together the benefits of organic and inorganic innovation to your customers, enabling them to access latest capabilities immediately.

Ease of refresh

The fact that your customers can permanently own the software creates great opportunities for you to drive infrastructure refresh discussions. The cost of software is no longer part of the hardware refresh negotiations. Deals are easier to do, resulting in an upswing in the refresh cycle.

Power to the Partner

Another significant aspect that is causing a great deal of excitement is that we are encouraging you, our partners to build proprietary solutions around Cisco ONE. This will help you drive innovation and transform business for customers as they ready themselves to compete & stay relevant in this new digital age.

This 'software first' approach is definitely a highly effective way for you to engage with your customers in defining their digital roadmap.

Cisco ONE helps you become more agile and provides an incredible opportunity to move your offerings and value up the IT stack. Your business can focus on delivering superior service, improved customer experience and drive better business outcomes.

Evolving our partner programs

We truly believe this software-focused approach to be the key to our joint success. We are constantly aligning our partner programs to guide you towards building a software-driven sales team, invest in pre-sales consultants, post-sales activation and adoption consultants that drive customer success.

Our Value Incentive Program (VIP) incentivizes you to guide your sales efforts and investment towards our software transition. The recently announced Life Cycle Advisor program and the Digital Network Architecture (DNA) offers provide a framework for you to build a successful Cisco software practice.

Our Shared Optimism

We are encouraged by the faith and support you have shown in our software strategy over the last two years and are inspired by your resolve to alter your traditional business models to help ride this exciting software journey with us.

I look forward to continuing to work closely with you to address the immense potential and possibilities that lay ahead of us in the APJ region.

We will continue to share product updates and other offers with you regularly through our newsletters and during your engagements with our Partner Managers.

What you can do today

Please visit the Digital Ready Sales Campaign website to learn how to initiate the digital ready discussions with your customers.

I also encourage you to stay connected with the regular updates on our software offerings and partner offers through our Cisco ONE Software site for partners. Let's continue to leverage the Software led GTM & transform your customers to stay competitive in the digital age.

There's Never Been A Better Time to Change the World Together.

Happy Selling!

Tarun Kumar Kalra is based in Singapore and leads the Software & Network Transformation GTM for the partner organization in APJ region.