Cisco today launched a $2.5 billion business resiliency initiative in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic to help fund IT projects through the rest of the calendar year.
Funded via Cisco Capital, the Cisco Business Resiliency Program is intended to help customers and partners alike cope with the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic at a time when organizations are unsure to what degree their cash flow might be impacted, says Oliver Tuszik, senior vice president for the Global Partner Organization at Cisco.
The Cisco program provides customers with a 90-day payment holiday in addition to allowing them to defer 95% of the cost of a new product or solution until 2021. Beginning January 2021, customers would then make a monthly payment based on the total financed amount and the remaining term of the financing.
Cisco is taking all the financial experience it gained during the 9/11 crisis and 2008 market collapse and applying it to the current crisis, says Tuszik.
Each industry segment and geographic region is being impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic to varying degrees, says Tuszik. In general, the first phase typically involves a rush to remotely enable their workforce. The second stage, depending on industry vertical, involves a reassessment of IT spending priorities. In some cases, such as hospitality, that is likely to result in reduced IT outlays, while in the healthcare sector there is increased spending as the amount of data that needs to be processed continues to exponentially expand, notes Tuszik.
A third anticipated phase will see organizations invest in upgrades to IT environments that will make the business as a whole more flexible, says Tuszik. Many business and IT leaders are just now starting to appreciate the degree to which a flexible IT environment is required to cope with business disruptions of the size and scope of a pandemic, notes Tuszik.
Channel partners should focus on their own balance sheets in the short term, without necessarily terminating contracts that might lead to even bigger opportunities once organizations begin to once again aggressively invest in IT. As such, channel partners should do everything they can to hold on to technical expertise that will prove hard to replace when organizations begin to invest in IT again.
“Partners should keep their people close,” says Tuszik.
At the same time, Tuszik says Cisco is already seeing a spike in demand for managed services as organizations look to outsource more of their IT operations, especially when it involves, for example, employing a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) service as an alternative to a virtual private network (VPN). In most cases, those managed services will be provided by partners, but Tuszik also notes there is demand for white-label managed services that Cisco might provide on behalf of a partner using an agent model.
Whatever the size and scope of the deal, it’s clear Cisco is joining the ranks of vendors committed to finding some way to fund it.
Be First to Comment