Cisco Dwell 2025 in San Diego (June 8–12) delivered an unbelievable week of groundbreaking bulletins, insightful periods, and significant conversations that proceed to resonate throughout our companion ecosystem.
For our #CiscoPartners, this 12 months’s occasion was distinctive. The Cisco Safety Accomplice staff hosted focused roundtable periods to discover the way forward for cybersecurity and focus on how improvements like embedded agentic AI and Duo IAM will affect companions and their prospects. These dialogue — led by Brian Feeney, VP International Safety Accomplice Gross sales, and myself — centered on strategic and technical priorities tailor-made to our companions’ wants.
From Merchandise to Outcomes: Our Unified Mission
For the final two years the Cisco Safety staff has been on a transformative journey, from a product-centric strategy to specializing in buyer outcomes. Companions have performed a essential function on this shift bringing their vendor-agnostic experience and customer-first mindset to ship significant outcomes.
As Scott Stout, Cisco Safety Chief Income Officer, famous through the Government Roundtable, “We will’t scale and convey worth to our prospects with out our companions.” This partnership-first mission was the inspiration of every part we achieved in San Diego.
This strategy aligns with the imaginative and prescient shared by Raj Chopra, SVP of Safety Product Administration and Design, through the Technical Roundtable: “fusing safety into the community, making safety easier, and innovating with AI.” These priorities have pushed the creation of a unified platform designed for companion profitability and buyer success.
What turned clear in San Diego is how this partnership-centric strategy is reshaping our go-to-market technique. Companions aren’t simply promoting our options they’re serving to us construct them, providing real-time suggestions knowledgeable by their hands-on experience with prospects.
Innovation Highlights & Accomplice Alternatives
Our roundtable periods highlighted the applied sciences that can outline the way forward for safety. Listed here are the important thing bulletins and their significance for your small business:
- The SOC of the Future: Cisco XDR & Splunk Integration
The SOC of the Future (Safety Operations Heart) was a key focus of our technical discussions. Rob Gresham, Cisco Principal Technical Advertising Engineer, shared invaluable insights from his expertise at Splunk, in incident response, and now at Cisco. His central message: it’s not about changing instruments however utilizing the precise software for the job. This strategy is exemplified by Cisco XDR 2.0, which delivers “Clear verdict. Decisive motion. AI velocity.” With options like On the spot Assault Verification and Assault Storyboard, analysts can perceive full assault chains in below 30 seconds, whereas Splunk continues to deal with deep investigations, compliance, and log retention.
Why It Issues for Companions: This confirmed multi-vendor strategy simplifies advanced environments at scale. For instance, at main occasions just like the Paris Olympics, Cisco XDR was particularly chosen to unify visibility and response throughout endpoints from a number of safety distributors, enabling seamless operations in demanding environments.
- The Evolving Firewall: Hybrid Mesh Structure
Cisco’s Hybrid Mesh Firewall technique redefines conventional firewall structure. With coverage written as soon as and enforced throughout campus, knowledge middle, and cloud environments, it delivers seamless safety integration. The portfolio refresh contains the brand new Safe Firewall 200 and 6100 Collection, alongside Safety Cloud Management for centralized coverage administration.
Why It Issues for Companions: This creates huge aggressive displacement and refresh alternatives. As Stephanie Hagopian, Vice President of Safety at CDW, famous,
“Like with the SASE play, we want persona based mostly messaging for Hybrid Mesh Firewall. We could be the drivers between the networking and safety groups, however we want the journey mapped out.”
Cisco is dedicated to offering that clear path—serving to you information prospects as they fuse safety immediately into their community for unprecedented ROI.
- The Unified Expertise: Common ZTNA and Safety Suites
Complexity stays one of many trade’s greatest challenges, particularly as customers join from anyplace on numerous gadgets, exposing gaps in conventional safety fashions. Cisco addresses this with Common ZTNA, which strikes past siloed instruments to ship seamless, safe entry for each consumer, on any gadget, anyplace. By unifying identity-first zero belief entry throughout trendy and legacy purposes, IoT/OT gadgets, and complicated environments, Common ZTNA eliminates complexity whereas guaranteeing resilient safety and constant efficiency. This strategy simplifies coverage administration, enhances consumer expertise, and permits versatile enforcement in cloud or on-premises environments.
On the coronary heart of this innovation is Duo IAM, which doubles Duo’s capabilities by delivering a security-first identification platform with end-to-end phishing resistance—a cornerstone of Cisco’s Safety Suites. Moreover, Cisco’s unified SASE structure integrates Firewall, Catalyst, and Meraki SD-WAN right into a consolidated SSE backend powered by Cisco Safe Entry, giving prospects strong integration choices on the edge.
Why It Issues for Companions: Cisco suites are a cornerstone for platform gross sales. Sanjay Aggarwal, Cisco VP of Safety Product Administration & Technique, emphasised that these suites improve efficacy with AI, enhance administrator and consumer experiences, and ship higher economics by consolidating merchandise to cut back whole price of possession. Whereas many purchasers use Microsoft licenses as a baseline, the reliance on combined third-party instruments to fill safety gaps usually will increase complexity and prices; Cisco suites present a complete, built-in different that simplifies operations and lowers whole price of possession.
We’re Listening: Your Voice Shapes Our Course
Cisco Dwell supplied invaluable alternatives for candid suggestions, and we heard you loud and clear: when you love the expertise, you want easier messaging, a stronger presence with trade analysts, and extra buyer success tales to strengthen your place out there.
We’re dedicated to supporting you with the assets and tales that show the worth of Cisco’s options. Listed here are just a few standout examples:
- LTI Mindtree: 80,000 customers deployed in below 90 days
- United Leases: 80% discount in help tickets
- Innovation Federal Credit score Union: Complete safety transformation
Transferring Ahead: Working Collectively
The momentum is actual, pushed by vital will increase in partner-initiated pipeline and deal registrations. As Brian Feeney stated whereas closing our government session, “When you’ve got doubts, come speak with us and let’s run collectively.”
We’re investing in your success with applications like our white-glove Concierge Desk, aggressive evaluation funding, and new incentives for Safety Suites adoption. These assets will aid you shut FY25 sturdy and dominate in FY26.
What’s Subsequent
Thanks to all our companions who made Cisco Dwell 2025 an incredible success. Let’s channel this vitality into attaining even better milestones.
Collectively, let’s obtain extra!
For our companions within the APJC area, be part of us at Cisco Dwell 2025 in Melbourne, Australia, from November 10–13, for one more thrilling occasion.
We’d love to listen to what you suppose. Ask a Query, Remark Under, and Keep Linked with #CiscoPartners on social!
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