October 18, 2024 • 19 mins
Partners are in good hands with Cisco’s consistent attention to detail and constant innovation and that includes their Partner Specializations resources.
Shelby Skrhak speaks with Bobby Young, Sr. Technical Enablement Engineer at Ingram Micro, about:
To join the discussion, follow us on Twitter @IngramMicroUSA #B2BTechTalk
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Shelby Skrhak speaks with Bobby Young, Sr. Technical Enablement Engineer at Ingram Micro, about:
- How Partner Specializations support end users
- Why Cisco shifted from Architectures to Partner Specializations
- How Cisco Black Belt Academy fits into the picture
To join the discussion, follow us on Twitter @IngramMicroUSA #B2BTechTalk
Listen to this episode and more like it by subscribing to B2B Tech Talk on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Spreaker.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
You're listening to B to B Tech Talk with Ingram Micro,
a place to learn about how to grow your business
and stay ahead of technological advances before they've become mainstream.
This episode is sponsored by Ingram Micro's Expantage, the next
level way to transform your business's potential and reshape how
customers see you through advanced transactional data.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Let's get into it. Welcome to B to B Tech
Talk with Ingram Micro. I'm your host, Shelby Skirhawk, and
our guest today is Bobby Young, senior Technical Enablement Engineer
for Ingram Micro. Bobby, welcome, thanks for having me again. Shelby,
thanks well. So today we are talking about partner specializations
and programs for Cisco at Ingram Micro. But first, Bobby,
(00:49):
you've been on the show several times, but just quickly
tell us about your role there at Ingram Micro. Sure.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Yeah, I'm what's called a senior technical Enablement engineer. There's
about five of us on our team. We kind of
split the nation as well as split up the different
Cisco architectures, so each of us has a territory as
well as kind of a specialization. So I usually focus
on enterprise networking as well. As the Moracci product line,
but we also kind of share a little bit of everything,
(01:17):
so we kind of know a little bit about everything,
kind of jack of all trades, master at nothing, you know.
But our job is really just to help out partners
to be enabled in selling Cisco products and solutions.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Got it? Got it? And you know that can't be
a daunting task because there's a lot there and it
can be a little bit overwhelming or intimidating if you
if you're just coming into it. So tell us about
partner specializations. What are they? Sure?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah, So, so partner specializations have gone through kind of
a couple of different eras obviously been something that's part
of Cisco really since you know, the nineteen nineties, making
sure that partners that are going out, you know, kind
of presenting Cisco solutions have all of kind of the
back end knowledge to be able to do that successfully
and can kind of be you know, a good ambassador
(02:07):
for the brand, so to say. So, those specializations are
really in place to have partners get the right knowledge
to be able to kind of talk the talk as
well as being able to kind of walk the walk
and be able to actually install everything correctly. But that's
only kind of one side of it, right, So there's
the end user facing side. That's basically, you know, somebody
(02:28):
looking for a partner saying, hey, we need you know,
new wireless or new switches for our school district. Let's
go to partner locator on Cisco's website and let's look
up who's in our area to be able to see that, right,
they have a little profile. Think of it very similar
to the way that you know, a headhunter might go
out to LinkedIn, you know, to see your your resume.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Right.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
It kind of tells you a little bit about who
you are, what you specialize in, what type of personality
you have. That is what most partners use, you know,
the partner specializations to showcase to their customers. On the
other side of that, there's a whole kind of internal
realm of what Cisco specializations can be used when talking
(03:07):
to Cisco. So that's either internally, if an account manager
or somebody has a lead internally and they're looking for
someone who's specialized, and let's say the collaboration space, they
might look up you know, collaboration specialized partners in that area.
But then there's also a whole set of back end
rebates and different deal registration programs and stuff that can
(03:28):
be utilized based on kind of where you are in
the stack of partnership within Cisco.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Okay, so you said that this has kind of evolved
since the nineties. Then tell me then, I guess clarify,
So how did this work before? And I guess what's
changing specifically? So I understand.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Yeah, yeah, So, so traditionally Cisco has kind of gone
from it used to be you would get specialized in
a certain product, right, Hey, I'm specialized to sell switches
or access points or this specifically. Yes, there, they kind
of evolved into what they called architectures. So for the
last I would say, up until maybe two or three
years ago, right, very common, you know, specialization would be
(04:10):
a Cisco architecture specialization. I'm specialized in selling security, or collaboration,
enterprise networking, data center. Right. Those were kind of the
four main architectures that you could get specialized in, and
then you would sell within that space.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Right.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
It kind of branched out from just selling this one
switch or this one access point into kind of selling
enterprise networking, which includes everything in there.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Right.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
The only problem is is that is that you still
kind of created these silos. Right, So a partner might say, hey,
I'm you know, enterprise networking specialized. But then what ended
up kind of happening is that is that we had
these business needs of their end users that would come
to them and say, hey, I have you know, a
perfect example, I have every you know, all of a sudden,
you know, half of my workforce is now working from home. Right.
(04:54):
My business need is very different than just selling them
switches and access points or even just you know, a
security license to be able to do that, you know,
from home. But it's now in kind of the solution realm,
where where they're going to that partner for the entire solution.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
So the next stage in evolution is getting away from
the architectures and kind of looking at the solutions themselves. Right.
Think of the conversations that a partner might have with
an end user is really around the business need of
the end user. Right. Somebody's coming to that partner saying, hey,
I have you know, half of my workforce is now
working from home. Right. My business need is everything involved
(05:31):
in that whole solution or that problem. So what Cisco's
kind of done is is taking these solutions right, something
like hybrid work for example, and turned it into a
specialization that allows that partner to have that holistic conversation. Right.
Getting someone something like hybrid work right, not only takes
security because you have to have those security licenses for
(05:52):
that you know, that user to work from home. It
might also include collaboration because you have the WebEx licenses
that would you know be needed to actually have them,
you know, have successful meetings and then coming back into
the office. You might have changed the workforce. So maybe
everyone doesn't have desks, maybe people have hotelling desks. Maybe
you're changing you know, the way that people connect to
(06:15):
their laptops via you know, be a wireless So now
we're talking you know, different enterprise networking, different wireless, different
switches that need to be put into place in there.
So really, whereas architectures think of architectures as kind of
like going to the supermarket to buy food, right, you're
buying those ingredients separately, right, what solution specializations kind of
(06:35):
did was they turned it into into looking at the
entire the entirety of a recipe, right, taking all of
those ingredients and turning into this thing that you can
then kind of present to that end user as the
whole recipe rather than just kind of the individual pieces.
Biggest deal is obviously, I mean from an architecture perspective,
if you're going in and having a conversation with somebody
about WebEx, right because you know that they're working from home. Great,
(06:57):
you just sold those WebEx licenses. Well, where is that
customer then going for all of the other ingredients, all
of the other pieces of that solution that they need.
They might talk to you about it, but they might
actually go to somebody else who might actually try to
glean th those licenses from you. So we want to
have partners enable to have that holistic conversation when they're
going to their customers around the entire solution and not
(07:21):
just an individual.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Piece of that. So this shift from selling individual products
to selling solutions that if the partner's customer comes to
them and say, hey, I'm having a problem with X,
you're able to say, okay, well let's look at that
problem and some of the ways to solve it instead
of because the customer is probably not coming to you
(07:42):
saying yeah, I need to buy X number of WebEx licenses,
and you know I need this or this and this.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, in the same way you don't go to a
restaurant and ask for you know, one chicken breast and
you know, maybe some fresh parsley and kind of you know, well,
unless I guess you're going to like Korean barbecue or
something like that. But for the most part, right, the
chef is involved, right, They're the ones that's a managed service. Right.
So nowadays, right, we have our partners that are that
are more acting like that managed service, right, that specialized
(08:12):
chef saying, hey, what do you want to consume? And
then the chef banks it for you, right, and then
they present it out on that plate and you know,
the end user doesn't have to do anything other than
just pay the bill at the end.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yeah, all right, So then evolving from the architectures to
the partner specializations, how then does this I don't want
to say certification, but you know, how does the learning happen? Then?
I mean, yes, the chef is is kind of creating
this whole this whole plate, this whole menu, But what's
(08:42):
the partner's end of this? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
So traditionally, right in the past, they used to have
to go through lots and lots of training, right, lots
of you know, five day courses or you know, buying
some three hundred dollars books from Cisco Direct, going out
to a Pierson View testing center, taking these right, getting
those individual certifications, and then depending on the specialization, all
(09:06):
of those individual requirements would kind of add up to
what you need from the specialization side. The problem with
that was that those certifications, although they are still in play,
right you can still go out and have your engineers
certified in CCNA and CCNP, those are not going anywhere
by any means. But what Cisco's kind of done is say, hey,
if you want to go out and get your engineers certified,
(09:28):
that's really up to you. That's a personal certification conversation
that you're going to have with those engineers. We are
not going to require you to have that because we
want you to have the choice as a partner to
be able to go out and learn as you see fit.
So they've simplified the way in which a partner gets
these specializations into a tool that they have called black Belt,
(09:50):
and Cisco black Belt is basically think of it just
a giant library of different types of courses that a
partner can take. So the specialization for requirements for these
solution specializations now might be having you know, a single
sales rep and a single engineer to go out and
take these black belt courses that are kind of more
(10:11):
traditionally kind of like an e learning platform. So you know,
you go through a couple of videos, you might view
a couple of PDFs. You know, in the deeper ones,
there might be a lab here and there. There's usually
a quiz at the end, and then they're good. Right,
It's more of a traditional kind of hey, let's let's
you know, get this done. The good news about that
is that Cisco has a much deeper relationship into the
(10:32):
content because they're the ones building it. So rather than
the CCNA c CNP, which really was only did revisions
major revisions really every three to five years, we now
know that three to five years is a very very
long time in the technology business. Right now, these black
belt learning courses can be basically cleared up on a dime, right,
(10:54):
So if something changes, Cisco changes the way that they
you know, even even the name of a product, right,
which never does. But if they did, for instance, they
could basically change their own learning and the user would
only have to basically view those those videos that have changed.
So it's very modular, very up to date, and Cisco
has kind of taken the reins back in and allowed
(11:16):
partners to do this. And the greatest thing about it
is again, rather than spending four hundred dollars on a
single test, which you know you're going to fail, only
to take it again for another four hundred dollars, all
of this is free for the partners.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
That's huge, does it though? Because you know, people do
have different learning styles in just an E learning format
where it's maybe just a video and just a pdf.
I guess I'm playing the devil's advocate a little bit.
Is that any less effective? How does that work?
Speaker 3 (11:43):
It depends? So I mean that that is you know
kind of I guess you know. One side of the coin, right,
is that you're moving into this you know, kind of
E learning era of just kind of video consumption. I
suppose there are some labs in kind of some some
later you know, not beginner but kind of intermediate classes
where it kind of has you go out and do it.
But it is it is a bit self learning in
a way.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
It's you sitting at a desk, which is not the
way I like to learn. So at Ingram, what we've
done is we've been working with partners to kind of
create almost a hybrid version of this. So we'll still
utilize the E learning on black Belt, still have them
go through those modules so that everything's checked off, but
as they're going through those, we might meet up with
(12:25):
that partner maybe once a week or so to kind
of have what we call open office hours. So for instance,
somebody just you know, we say hey, you know, maybe
once a week, you know, we set it up so
that they finish two modules, so two hours of content,
and then every two modules or so they meet up
with our team where then we can go over that
two hours of content, answer any questions they might have,
(12:48):
give some real life demos into what they learned about.
So if they just learned about Muraki, rather than seeing
a video about Muraki, we can actually bring up the
Muraki dashboard and kind of have them walk through and
kind of give it more of a real world scenario.
We found that very very helpful for partners, especially ones
that are starting from scratch that you know, don't just
want to check a box and get the specialization, but
(13:09):
want to learn everything as they go works really well
for new higher trainings as well. So black Belt does
have a new higher kind of training course that you
can go through. But what better way to you know,
to get a new hire involved than to tell them
that they have to go through fifteen hours of content
sitting at their desk with their headphones on right right,
So this kind of brightens it up a little bit,
(13:29):
allows them to get in front of our team, allows
us to introduce ourselves and our resources, and gets them
really enabled so that by the end of that they
are ready to go and sell those Cisco solutions.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Excellent, And that makes sense because you sometimes you need
to talk through it or you need to ask questions,
and having the expert there the tutor, I guess, to
give you those real world examples to show you the
actual platform. That's great, what's in it? Then again big
picture from the partner or resellers side, so they know
(14:04):
that their customers want more of a managed service approach
to their business. So when looking at these partner specializations,
what Cisco black Belt offers and what Ingram micro brings
to it, I guess kind of in summary, big picture,
what's the benefit for partners?
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Yeah, So I mean everything from you know, front end
deal registration on the kind of the one step up
the select side, right, So the different levels are if
you are a brand new partner, you're a registered partner, right,
You're Cisco registered. One step up from there is the
Select level, so this would be a Select partner, and
then one step up from there is the Premier partner,
(14:46):
and then the very very top would be a Gold partner.
The metaphor I like to use is that the Select
levels kind of like that that high school diploma level,
right Select, I'm sorry, the registered is that high school
diploma level. The Elect would be kind of an associate's degree.
Then you have the Premiere being the bachelor's right, and
then Gold being your masters. It's really at that bachelor's level, right,
(15:09):
that Premiere level where a partner gets more focused and
more specialized, more deep into that specialization, and then the
Gold partner kind of has a little bit of a
sprinkling of everything. So with that at the Select level
comes front end discounts you can get through registering a deal.
At the Premiere level, you start getting into the back
end rebates, so being able to you know, quarterly, you know,
(15:32):
have different bonuses based off of different SKUs that that
are wanting to be sold, and then at a gold
level there's a one percent you know, back end rebate
that you get on literally every SKW that that you sell.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
So the more learning, the more education you take upon yourself,
the more lucrative it's going to be for the business.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
All right, Well, as we do start to wrap up
our episode. So Bobby, when we were talking beforehand, I
was like, we've had you on the show so many times,
but I was going to give you the option of
answering my last question, and that's where do you see
technology going in the next year? Are you? Are you
feeling the crystal ball right now?
Speaker 3 (16:11):
It's funny because I think that the last two times
I've said AI, and we've gotten into some pretty interesting
conversations about AI. I can't say that's going anywhere, but
I can say that, you know, technology is flattening a
little bit, I suppose. So again, just like like we
talked about with Cisco specializations, you start kind of seeing
(16:32):
less and less different types of products and more products
that kind of do a little bit of everything. Right.
Think of there's a really really popular picture, you know,
after the iPhone was brought out where it's basically kind
of somebody you know, holding an iPhone, right, and then
a giant pile of just different things that it replaces
(16:54):
in the background, you know, from a music jukebox right
to a pad and pen and paper, right, all of
these different things, right, can be kind of replaced. Right,
we had that one single device that can do everything.
Cisco's kind of doing the same thing, right. They're they're
they're working a little bit more in the cloud, right,
flattening a little bit of their product lines. More recently,
they've taken their enterprise networking line, you know, the Maroccy line,
(17:15):
as well as the security line and kind of put
them all together. But just for the sheer purpose that
that security really shouldn't be a separate product, right, You
shouldn't just have this one firewall that kind of does everything.
Security should be almost like a like adding salt to
a dish, right, just it's a sprinkling of a little
bit of you know, over everything, right, all of those switches,
(17:36):
the access points, the licenses, people at home, right, everyone
should have security involved. So, you know, coinciding with the
conversations we've had around AI, you know, I think security
is going to be also one of those things that
we look into, just because AI is going to make
it much easier for those bad actors to be able to,
you know, push out those attacks and everything is going
(17:58):
to have to be secure.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, and you're right, it has to be ingrained in everything.
It's a it's not a separate, separate conversation for anyone
to it's got questions about something that we talked about today.
How can they reach.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Out, Well, they can reach out directly to me at
Robert dot Young at ingrammicro dot com. And yeah, love
to hear from anyone who's interested in talking more.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Excellent. Well, Robert, thank you so much for being on
the show. Appreciate the time and insight.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Yeah, not a problem anytime.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
And thank you listeners for tuning in to B to
B Tech Talk with Ingram Micro. Be sure to subscribe
and don't forget. You can find all of these episodes
on the Ingram Micro Expantage platform. Until next time, I'm
Shelby Skahawk.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
You've been listening to B to B Tech Talk by
Ingram Micro. This episode was sponsored by Ingram Micro Expantage.
B to B Tech Talk is a joint production between
Sweetfish Media and ingram Micro. To listen to this episode
and many others, visit ingrammicro dot com
You're listening to B to B Tech Talk with Ingram Micro,
a place to learn about how to grow your business
and stay ahead of technological advances before they've become mainstream.
This episode is sponsored by Ingram Micro's Expantage, the next
level way to transform your business's potential and reshape how
customers see you through advanced transactional data.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Let's get into it. Welcome to B to B Tech
Talk with Ingram Micro. I'm your host, Shelby Skirhawk, and
our guest today is Bobby Young, senior Technical Enablement Engineer
for Ingram Micro. Bobby, welcome, thanks for having me again. Shelby,
thanks well. So today we are talking about partner specializations
and programs for Cisco at Ingram Micro. But first, Bobby,
(00:49):
you've been on the show several times, but just quickly
tell us about your role there at Ingram Micro. Sure.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Yeah, I'm what's called a senior technical Enablement engineer. There's
about five of us on our team. We kind of
split the nation as well as split up the different
Cisco architectures, so each of us has a territory as
well as kind of a specialization. So I usually focus
on enterprise networking as well. As the Moracci product line,
but we also kind of share a little bit of everything,
(01:17):
so we kind of know a little bit about everything,
kind of jack of all trades, master at nothing, you know.
But our job is really just to help out partners
to be enabled in selling Cisco products and solutions.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Got it? Got it? And you know that can't be
a daunting task because there's a lot there and it
can be a little bit overwhelming or intimidating if you
if you're just coming into it. So tell us about
partner specializations. What are they? Sure?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah, So, so partner specializations have gone through kind of
a couple of different eras obviously been something that's part
of Cisco really since you know, the nineteen nineties, making
sure that partners that are going out, you know, kind
of presenting Cisco solutions have all of kind of the
back end knowledge to be able to do that successfully
and can kind of be you know, a good ambassador
(02:07):
for the brand, so to say. So, those specializations are
really in place to have partners get the right knowledge
to be able to kind of talk the talk as
well as being able to kind of walk the walk
and be able to actually install everything correctly. But that's
only kind of one side of it, right, So there's
the end user facing side. That's basically, you know, somebody
(02:28):
looking for a partner saying, hey, we need you know,
new wireless or new switches for our school district. Let's
go to partner locator on Cisco's website and let's look
up who's in our area to be able to see that, right,
they have a little profile. Think of it very similar
to the way that you know, a headhunter might go
out to LinkedIn, you know, to see your your resume.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Right.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
It kind of tells you a little bit about who
you are, what you specialize in, what type of personality
you have. That is what most partners use, you know,
the partner specializations to showcase to their customers. On the
other side of that, there's a whole kind of internal
realm of what Cisco specializations can be used when talking
(03:07):
to Cisco. So that's either internally, if an account manager
or somebody has a lead internally and they're looking for
someone who's specialized, and let's say the collaboration space, they
might look up you know, collaboration specialized partners in that area.
But then there's also a whole set of back end
rebates and different deal registration programs and stuff that can
(03:28):
be utilized based on kind of where you are in
the stack of partnership within Cisco.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Okay, so you said that this has kind of evolved
since the nineties. Then tell me then, I guess clarify,
So how did this work before? And I guess what's
changing specifically? So I understand.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Yeah, yeah, So, so traditionally Cisco has kind of gone
from it used to be you would get specialized in
a certain product, right, Hey, I'm specialized to sell switches
or access points or this specifically. Yes, there, they kind
of evolved into what they called architectures. So for the
last I would say, up until maybe two or three
years ago, right, very common, you know, specialization would be
(04:10):
a Cisco architecture specialization. I'm specialized in selling security, or collaboration,
enterprise networking, data center. Right. Those were kind of the
four main architectures that you could get specialized in, and
then you would sell within that space.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Right.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
It kind of branched out from just selling this one
switch or this one access point into kind of selling
enterprise networking, which includes everything in there.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Right.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
The only problem is is that is that you still
kind of created these silos. Right, So a partner might say, hey,
I'm you know, enterprise networking specialized. But then what ended
up kind of happening is that is that we had
these business needs of their end users that would come
to them and say, hey, I have you know, a
perfect example, I have every you know, all of a sudden,
you know, half of my workforce is now working from home. Right.
(04:54):
My business need is very different than just selling them
switches and access points or even just you know, a
security license to be able to do that, you know,
from home. But it's now in kind of the solution realm,
where where they're going to that partner for the entire solution.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
So the next stage in evolution is getting away from
the architectures and kind of looking at the solutions themselves. Right.
Think of the conversations that a partner might have with
an end user is really around the business need of
the end user. Right. Somebody's coming to that partner saying, hey,
I have you know, half of my workforce is now
working from home. Right. My business need is everything involved
(05:31):
in that whole solution or that problem. So what Cisco's
kind of done is is taking these solutions right, something
like hybrid work for example, and turned it into a
specialization that allows that partner to have that holistic conversation. Right.
Getting someone something like hybrid work right, not only takes
security because you have to have those security licenses for
(05:52):
that you know, that user to work from home. It
might also include collaboration because you have the WebEx licenses
that would you know be needed to actually have them,
you know, have successful meetings and then coming back into
the office. You might have changed the workforce. So maybe
everyone doesn't have desks, maybe people have hotelling desks. Maybe
you're changing you know, the way that people connect to
(06:15):
their laptops via you know, be a wireless So now
we're talking you know, different enterprise networking, different wireless, different
switches that need to be put into place in there.
So really, whereas architectures think of architectures as kind of
like going to the supermarket to buy food, right, you're
buying those ingredients separately, right, what solution specializations kind of
(06:35):
did was they turned it into into looking at the
entire the entirety of a recipe, right, taking all of
those ingredients and turning into this thing that you can
then kind of present to that end user as the
whole recipe rather than just kind of the individual pieces.
Biggest deal is obviously, I mean from an architecture perspective,
if you're going in and having a conversation with somebody
about WebEx, right because you know that they're working from home. Great,
(06:57):
you just sold those WebEx licenses. Well, where is that
customer then going for all of the other ingredients, all
of the other pieces of that solution that they need.
They might talk to you about it, but they might
actually go to somebody else who might actually try to
glean th those licenses from you. So we want to
have partners enable to have that holistic conversation when they're
going to their customers around the entire solution and not
(07:21):
just an individual.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Piece of that. So this shift from selling individual products
to selling solutions that if the partner's customer comes to
them and say, hey, I'm having a problem with X,
you're able to say, okay, well let's look at that
problem and some of the ways to solve it instead
of because the customer is probably not coming to you
(07:42):
saying yeah, I need to buy X number of WebEx licenses,
and you know I need this or this and this.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, in the same way you don't go to a
restaurant and ask for you know, one chicken breast and
you know, maybe some fresh parsley and kind of you know, well,
unless I guess you're going to like Korean barbecue or
something like that. But for the most part, right, the
chef is involved, right, They're the ones that's a managed service. Right.
So nowadays, right, we have our partners that are that
are more acting like that managed service, right, that specialized
(08:12):
chef saying, hey, what do you want to consume? And
then the chef banks it for you, right, and then
they present it out on that plate and you know,
the end user doesn't have to do anything other than
just pay the bill at the end.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yeah, all right, So then evolving from the architectures to
the partner specializations, how then does this I don't want
to say certification, but you know, how does the learning happen? Then?
I mean, yes, the chef is is kind of creating
this whole this whole plate, this whole menu, But what's
(08:42):
the partner's end of this? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
So traditionally, right in the past, they used to have
to go through lots and lots of training, right, lots
of you know, five day courses or you know, buying
some three hundred dollars books from Cisco Direct, going out
to a Pierson View testing center, taking these right, getting
those individual certifications, and then depending on the specialization, all
(09:06):
of those individual requirements would kind of add up to
what you need from the specialization side. The problem with
that was that those certifications, although they are still in play,
right you can still go out and have your engineers
certified in CCNA and CCNP, those are not going anywhere
by any means. But what Cisco's kind of done is say, hey,
if you want to go out and get your engineers certified,
(09:28):
that's really up to you. That's a personal certification conversation
that you're going to have with those engineers. We are
not going to require you to have that because we
want you to have the choice as a partner to
be able to go out and learn as you see fit.
So they've simplified the way in which a partner gets
these specializations into a tool that they have called black Belt,
(09:50):
and Cisco black Belt is basically think of it just
a giant library of different types of courses that a
partner can take. So the specialization for requirements for these
solution specializations now might be having you know, a single
sales rep and a single engineer to go out and
take these black belt courses that are kind of more
(10:11):
traditionally kind of like an e learning platform. So you know,
you go through a couple of videos, you might view
a couple of PDFs. You know, in the deeper ones,
there might be a lab here and there. There's usually
a quiz at the end, and then they're good. Right,
It's more of a traditional kind of hey, let's let's
you know, get this done. The good news about that
is that Cisco has a much deeper relationship into the
(10:32):
content because they're the ones building it. So rather than
the CCNA c CNP, which really was only did revisions
major revisions really every three to five years, we now
know that three to five years is a very very
long time in the technology business. Right now, these black
belt learning courses can be basically cleared up on a dime, right,
(10:54):
So if something changes, Cisco changes the way that they
you know, even even the name of a product, right,
which never does. But if they did, for instance, they
could basically change their own learning and the user would
only have to basically view those those videos that have changed.
So it's very modular, very up to date, and Cisco
has kind of taken the reins back in and allowed
(11:16):
partners to do this. And the greatest thing about it
is again, rather than spending four hundred dollars on a
single test, which you know you're going to fail, only
to take it again for another four hundred dollars, all
of this is free for the partners.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
That's huge, does it though? Because you know, people do
have different learning styles in just an E learning format
where it's maybe just a video and just a pdf.
I guess I'm playing the devil's advocate a little bit.
Is that any less effective? How does that work?
Speaker 3 (11:43):
It depends? So I mean that that is you know
kind of I guess you know. One side of the coin, right,
is that you're moving into this you know, kind of
E learning era of just kind of video consumption. I
suppose there are some labs in kind of some some
later you know, not beginner but kind of intermediate classes
where it kind of has you go out and do it.
But it is it is a bit self learning in
a way.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
It's you sitting at a desk, which is not the
way I like to learn. So at Ingram, what we've
done is we've been working with partners to kind of
create almost a hybrid version of this. So we'll still
utilize the E learning on black Belt, still have them
go through those modules so that everything's checked off, but
as they're going through those, we might meet up with
(12:25):
that partner maybe once a week or so to kind
of have what we call open office hours. So for instance,
somebody just you know, we say hey, you know, maybe
once a week, you know, we set it up so
that they finish two modules, so two hours of content,
and then every two modules or so they meet up
with our team where then we can go over that
two hours of content, answer any questions they might have,
(12:48):
give some real life demos into what they learned about.
So if they just learned about Muraki, rather than seeing
a video about Muraki, we can actually bring up the
Muraki dashboard and kind of have them walk through and
kind of give it more of a real world scenario.
We found that very very helpful for partners, especially ones
that are starting from scratch that you know, don't just
want to check a box and get the specialization, but
(13:09):
want to learn everything as they go works really well
for new higher trainings as well. So black Belt does
have a new higher kind of training course that you
can go through. But what better way to you know,
to get a new hire involved than to tell them
that they have to go through fifteen hours of content
sitting at their desk with their headphones on right right,
So this kind of brightens it up a little bit,
(13:29):
allows them to get in front of our team, allows
us to introduce ourselves and our resources, and gets them
really enabled so that by the end of that they
are ready to go and sell those Cisco solutions.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Excellent, And that makes sense because you sometimes you need
to talk through it or you need to ask questions,
and having the expert there the tutor, I guess, to
give you those real world examples to show you the
actual platform. That's great, what's in it? Then again big
picture from the partner or resellers side, so they know
(14:04):
that their customers want more of a managed service approach
to their business. So when looking at these partner specializations,
what Cisco black Belt offers and what Ingram micro brings
to it, I guess kind of in summary, big picture,
what's the benefit for partners?
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Yeah, So I mean everything from you know, front end
deal registration on the kind of the one step up
the select side, right, So the different levels are if
you are a brand new partner, you're a registered partner, right,
You're Cisco registered. One step up from there is the
Select level, so this would be a Select partner, and
then one step up from there is the Premier partner,
(14:46):
and then the very very top would be a Gold partner.
The metaphor I like to use is that the Select
levels kind of like that that high school diploma level,
right Select, I'm sorry, the registered is that high school
diploma level. The Elect would be kind of an associate's degree.
Then you have the Premiere being the bachelor's right, and
then Gold being your masters. It's really at that bachelor's level, right,
(15:09):
that Premiere level where a partner gets more focused and
more specialized, more deep into that specialization, and then the
Gold partner kind of has a little bit of a
sprinkling of everything. So with that at the Select level
comes front end discounts you can get through registering a deal.
At the Premiere level, you start getting into the back
end rebates, so being able to you know, quarterly, you know,
(15:32):
have different bonuses based off of different SKUs that that
are wanting to be sold, and then at a gold
level there's a one percent you know, back end rebate
that you get on literally every SKW that that you sell.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
So the more learning, the more education you take upon yourself,
the more lucrative it's going to be for the business.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
All right, Well, as we do start to wrap up
our episode. So Bobby, when we were talking beforehand, I
was like, we've had you on the show so many times,
but I was going to give you the option of
answering my last question, and that's where do you see
technology going in the next year? Are you? Are you
feeling the crystal ball right now?
Speaker 3 (16:11):
It's funny because I think that the last two times
I've said AI, and we've gotten into some pretty interesting
conversations about AI. I can't say that's going anywhere, but
I can say that, you know, technology is flattening a
little bit, I suppose. So again, just like like we
talked about with Cisco specializations, you start kind of seeing
(16:32):
less and less different types of products and more products
that kind of do a little bit of everything. Right.
Think of there's a really really popular picture, you know,
after the iPhone was brought out where it's basically kind
of somebody you know, holding an iPhone, right, and then
a giant pile of just different things that it replaces
(16:54):
in the background, you know, from a music jukebox right
to a pad and pen and paper, right, all of
these different things, right, can be kind of replaced. Right,
we had that one single device that can do everything.
Cisco's kind of doing the same thing, right. They're they're
they're working a little bit more in the cloud, right,
flattening a little bit of their product lines. More recently,
they've taken their enterprise networking line, you know, the Maroccy line,
(17:15):
as well as the security line and kind of put
them all together. But just for the sheer purpose that
that security really shouldn't be a separate product, right, You
shouldn't just have this one firewall that kind of does everything.
Security should be almost like a like adding salt to
a dish, right, just it's a sprinkling of a little
bit of you know, over everything, right, all of those switches,
(17:36):
the access points, the licenses, people at home, right, everyone
should have security involved. So, you know, coinciding with the
conversations we've had around AI, you know, I think security
is going to be also one of those things that
we look into, just because AI is going to make
it much easier for those bad actors to be able to,
you know, push out those attacks and everything is going
(17:58):
to have to be secure.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, and you're right, it has to be ingrained in everything.
It's a it's not a separate, separate conversation for anyone
to it's got questions about something that we talked about today.
How can they reach.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Out, Well, they can reach out directly to me at
Robert dot Young at ingrammicro dot com. And yeah, love
to hear from anyone who's interested in talking more.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Excellent. Well, Robert, thank you so much for being on
the show. Appreciate the time and insight.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Yeah, not a problem anytime.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
And thank you listeners for tuning in to B to
B Tech Talk with Ingram Micro. Be sure to subscribe
and don't forget. You can find all of these episodes
on the Ingram Micro Expantage platform. Until next time, I'm
Shelby Skahawk.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
You've been listening to B to B Tech Talk by
Ingram Micro. This episode was sponsored by Ingram Micro Expantage.
B to B Tech Talk is a joint production between
Sweetfish Media and ingram Micro. To listen to this episode
and many others, visit ingrammicro dot com
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