Managed services represent a significant growth opportunity for Cisco partners and are a leading driver of Cisco's overall Service Provider Revenue, which in the 4th Quarter of 2007 grew at 20+% year/year.
Industry research from Ovum indicates that managed services will continue to grow at an approximately 20% compound annual growth rate and reach $7 billion USD in revenue by 2009.
Advanced technologies will show the most growth with managed IP telephony expected to grow 65% and managed security expected to grow 28%.
 Cisco appears to be waving the equivalent of racing's blue flag by announcing this week a new Cisco partner program designed to extend and accelerate the growth of managed services. |
Basically, the new Cisco program will move aside some partners not able to qualify in order to allow more qualified partners to pass.
 "Headquartered in South Africa, Dimension Data knows firsthand that there is a huge opportunity in bringing innovative managed services to emerging markets," said Scott Petty - group executive services at Dimension Data, a global IT services and solution provider that operates in over 40 countries on six continents. |
"As network-based technology becomes more complex and mission critical, our customers are increasingly interesting in buying technology as a service. Especially in the small and medium-sized business market, businesses want to be able to focus on their core competencies, while still getting the benefits of an advanced communications solution."
 "VSNL has decided to build a dedicated managed services operation from the ground up to deliver enhanced customer experience and operational excellence," said Vinod Kumar - president Global Data Solutions at VSNL, a leading global communications company and member of the Tata Group. |
"We have seen explosive growth in managed services for small to medium-sized businesses, as well as large enterprises around the world. The Cisco Managed Services Channel Program helps us to support our service and delivery operations in India and provide managed services globally."
 "Growth in the managed services market will continue to outpace IT industry growth as customers strive to reduce complexity, decrease risk and improve time to market," said Edison Peres - vice president of Worldwide Channels at Cisco. |
"Based on a consistent, global framework, the Cisco Managed Services Channel Program will allow regional channel partners, service providers and systems integrators to more easily meet our customers' growing demand for managed services in established and emerging markets."
Cisco Powered Program Framework
Managed Unified Communications:
Unified Contact Center (Managed)
A Cisco Powered Managed Unified Contact Center Service provides an IP-based, centralized infrastructure that can support many distributed sites.
The service offers a full suite of contact management services that can be implemented immediately or incrementally.
The service enables customer deployments of < 10 agents and scaling up to > 1,000 agents and provides customers administrative control options for their environment.
This service delivers intelligent call routing, network-to-desktop CTI, and multichannel contact management over an IP network to contact center agents. The solution also delivers TDM to IP connectivity with Cisco VoIP gateways, and media termination with Cisco IP phones.
The service provides comprehensive SLAs for service performance, a Web Portal that provides real time and historical performance analysis.
Unified Contact Center (Hosted)
A Cisco Powered Managed Unified Contact Center Service provides an IP-based, centralized infrastructure that can support many distributed sites.
The service offers a full suite of contact management services that can be implemented immediately or incrementally.
The service enables customer deployments of < 10 agents and scaling up to > 1,000 agents and provides customers administrative control options for their environment.
This service delivers intelligent call routing, network-to-desktop CTI, and multichannel contact management over an IP network to contact center agents. The solution also delivers TDM to IP connectivity with Cisco VoIP gateways, and media termination with Cisco IP phones.
The service provides comprehensive SLAs for service performance, a Web Portal that provides real time and historical performance analysis.
A Cisco Powered managed Unified Communications service provides unified voice, video, data and mobility communications for the business environment.
The service provides the integration of voice, video, and other collaborative data applications into intelligent network communications solutions. These solutions, including IP telephony, unified communications, and rich-media conferencing, take full advantage the power, resilience, and flexibility of an organization's UC network.
The service is provided with quality of service (QoS) capabilities that ensure a consistent experience, service resiliency options for site design, and embedded security capabilities that protect the customer environment.
The service provides comprehensive SLAs for service performance and a Web portal that provides real time and historical performance analysis.
Managed Mobile Communications:
A managed wireless LAN service extends the corporate network securely, allowing employees to conduct business anywhere, anytime, from any device.
The service has integral security capabilities that protect both the device and the enterprise network with quality of service (QoS), availability, and reliability.
It supports advanced wireless capabilities such as Wi-Fi Multimedia, virtual LANs, and fast, secure layer 2 and 3 roaming for seamless mobility.
Managed Data Center:
This Cisco Powered managed hosting service provides the secure hosting of Web or other application servers, and related Internet connectivity. The service scales from basic co-location, where the customer owns the equipment “in the cage”, to traditional Web hosting, where the provider owns the servers and all related equipment.
Essentially, the baseline offering would provide space, power, and pipe in an environmentally controlled fire protected facility with redundant power and network connectivity. The higher end offering is a more complex service built upon a highly network secured and resilient infrastructure that conforms to Cisco’s data center VFrame design guidelines for virtual application/server functionality and application control server load balancing.
The service ranges from offering 24x7 continuous monitoring over servers and network, to incremental offerings of real time and historical traffic reporting and server performance via a customer portal with some level of customer control if required. Additionally, the hosted applications scale from being horizontally offered, to multiple vertically defined offers across industry sectors.
The service is backed by comprehensive SLAs for service performance, including network availability, server availability, and server implementation timelines.
Managed Security:
A Cisco Powered managed firewall service provides Cisco proven firewall technology solutions to help customers better protect their business infrastructure.
The service is managed from a security operations center (SOC). It supports the key features available on the Cisco firewall solutions, such as network bandwidth optimization and anti-IP address spoofing, and conforms to Cisco and industry best practices.
The service provides comprehensive SLAs covering the overall performance of the service, and online access to real-time and historical service performance reports.
A Cisco Powered managed Intrusion Detection (IDS)/Intrusion Prevention (IPS) service provides Cisco deep-packet, inspection-based technology to better protect a customer’s business Infrastructure.
This service delivers real-time monitoring and detection and mitigation of many types of malicious network traffic, such as DDoS attacks.
The service is managed from a security operations center (SOC) and is deployed at strategic locations across the enterprise network. It supports the key features available on the Cisco IDS/IPS solutions and conforms to Cisco and industry best practices.
The service provides comprehensive SLAs covering the overall performance of the service, and online access to real-time and historical service performance reports.
A managed secure router is a managed WAN router with integrated security to provide secure connectivity.
This service is based on the Integrated Services Router (ISR) security bundles that are packaged in 3 forms: Entry bundle for basic security, enhanced bundle for added performance and scale, and V3PN for integrated security and IP communications.
This service delivers 24x7x365 management, monitoring, and maintenance of network traffic flows. Included are comprehensive SLAs covering the overall performance of the service and online access to real-time and historical service performance reports.
Managed Connectivity:
A Cisco Powered managed MPLS VPN service provides private IP networks with high quality, secure, any-to-any connectivity.
The service is based on the Cisco IP NGN Architecture, Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) and Cisco Design and Implementation Guides.
The service delivers appropriate levels of latency, jitter, and packet loss to ensure the successful, concurrent handling of multiple types of traffic, especially voice and video, from customer site to customer site.
The network classifies and prioritizes traffic flows from end to end, enabling SLAs for multiple classes of service.
The service also provides comprehensive SLAs covering the overall performance of the service, and online access to real-time and historical service-performance reports.
A Cisco Powered managed Metro Ethernet service provides high-speed, site-to-site connectivity. It supports the delivery of voice, video and other mission-critical applications.
This service is based on the Cisco IP NGN Architecture, Cisco Design and Implementation Guide, and Metro Ethernet Forum standards and specifications.
The service delivers a variety of point-to-point and multipoint Ethernet services over Layer 1, Layer 2, and Layer 3 topologies with seamless integration. It allows for QoS functionality, including classification and prioritization techniques to enable multiple levels of service.
The service also provides comprehensive SLAs covering the overall performance of the service, and online access to real-time and historical service-performance reports.
A Cisco Powered managed Internet service delivers secure Internet connectivity.
This service is based on the Cisco self-defending network architecture and is built upon a secure infrastructure.
The service delivers connectivity for users regardless of location and access methods. It is backed by comprehensive SLAs covering the overall performance of the service, and online access to real-time and historical service-performance reports.
The service offers service-level agreements for network performance and service availability, supports quality of service (QoS) techniques, access control lists, and other industry best practices.
A Cisco Powered managed IP Trunking service is a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based trunk from the service provider to an IP PBX or key system, delivering voice, multimedia, and data traffic.
The service provider provides basic connectivity, emergency services, dial plan management and operator services. Local and long distance call connections are completed by the service provider. A managed IP Trunking service includes the IP termination service and features a PBX with a gateway, an IAD or an IP PBX.
The service provides comprehensive SLAs covering the overall performance of the service, and online access to real-time and historical service performance reports.
A managed router service provides remote router configuration, management and maintenance. This service delivers 24x7 management and monitoring of customer site routers in a Wide Area Network (WAN).
A managed security IPSec VPN service provides secure site-to-site connectivity through encrypted data streams over a private or public network.
This service is based on RFC specifications and protocol, a framework of open standards.
This service delivers IPSec encryption and tunneling protocols, data confidentiality, data integrity, and data authentication over unprotected networks such as the Internet.
A managed Local Area Network (LAN) service provides remote LAN switch configuration, management and maintenance.
A managed Frame Relay/ATM service delivers Layer 2 site to site connectivity over a Frame Relay or ATM network.
This service delivers 24x7 management, monitoring and maintenance of customer site routers in a Wide Area Network (WAN).
Related story:
| Network World | Cisco Rolls Out Managed Services Channel Program |
Are Cisco partners becoming more unequal with each new Cisco program?
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Brad Reese cofounded BradReese.Com Cisco Refurbished which offers one year warranties on Cisco Refurbished and Cisco Repair.
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The world according to Garp....and Cisco
Holy Mackerel! Every time I read NetworkWorld it seems that more and more they're singing the Cisco' tune. Really, is there that little to report on otherwise?
Luv singing Cisco's tune
Luv to sing Cisco's tune!
For example:
Is Vyatta's less than $100 per GB of memory advantageous over Cisco's sometimes $5,000 per GB of memory?
A one and a two and a three ! ! !
Sincerely,
Brad Reese
http://www.BradReese.Com
Transformation to an Experience Provider
Here's a Cisco blog post with additional details regarding their related commentary at the recent Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm event in London.
The Open Path to New Business Model Creation