 Live from Barcelona, Spain. It's theCUBE, covering Cisco Live 2018. Brought to you by Cisco, Veeam, and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. Okay, welcome back everyone. This is theCUBE live in Barcelona, Spain for Cisco Live 2018 in Europe. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE with my host this week. Stu Miniman, Wikibon analyst. Our next guest is Denny Trevette, who's vice president of Ecosystem Sales Acceleration a global partner organization at Cisco. Denny, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you very much, glad to be here. So you have a good job. You actually have on the business side, look at commercializing all this great technology, everyone's learning. It's important because there's big numbers, billions of dollars involved in the businesses, depending who you talk to. This vendor does a billion dollars with Cisco. This vendor does a billion dollars with suppliers with Cisco. So a lot of happy customers, but an evolving ecosystem. What's the business outlook from your standpoint? How's this change happening? Positive change for Cisco? What's going on the business side? Is it bumpy? Is it smooth? Give us the weather report. Yeah, I think first point though, you said I have a good job for Cisco. I've got a great job for Cisco. I love what we do, because our job is all about how do we leverage the full power of the Cisco partner ecosystem to really build new connections that will drive and accelerate our solutions to all kinds of customers. And when you say bumpy areas, absolutely. There's always going to be trends and different moves in the market or what have you. But for us, what we're able to do is expand the opportunity that Cisco is focused on. We're not just selling products, technologies, and architectures into an IT buying center. Now we're opening up buying centers for our good friends at AppD, or getting into the line of business, and engaging in new conversations that unlock real value. You guys have always been a company that has a heritage of enabling technologies. You enable other people to create value and speeds and fees and great tech. The question for you is, you mentioned in your title, I mentioned sales acceleration. You can't be in a more pressing time now where words like time to value are faster. Customers want more value upfront, faster than ever before. So that kind of puts the pressure on the business front. How do you get that done? Is there a certain business model that you guys have evolved to? Is it tried and true? Can you explain the business model of how you get to that value faster with partners? Yeah, I think it's a very important point because back in the day, we used to celebrate successes and a success was, hey, we just launched a new joint integration, and that was a success. And we'd celebrate that. In the end, nobody monetized that. And so in the end, that doesn't matter, right? So now what we're trying to figure out is how do we truly unlock the power of these relationships? And there's two transformations we've driven. One is how we engage multiple partners in new sales motions. We've never done that effectively as an industry, quite frankly. And we've launched things like ACES, which stands for Accelerating Cisco Ecosystem Sales, which is a fully built framework for better engaging multiple partners so that we can actually do all of the things that we all know we need to do as a business to drive and accelerate success, but we do it highly effectively. And there's multiple steps to it. And multiple stakeholders, too. A lot of stakeholders, yeah. And by the way, a big part of it is, make sure you actually have agreement from the executive decision makers, from the different partners that we're going to do down these paths in the first point. So very, very important. And soon you can automate that away. It's like DevOps culture, right? Actually, no, that's so real. So we work with this one partner who built out the whole ACES framework. Then they built out ACES 2.0, and they just said, or sorry, ACES at scale. Now they just said, hey, Denny, we're building out ACES at hyper scale, where we're going to automate this whole process so that we can drive path to revenue plans with closed loop selling, et cetera. So it's a game changer for us. So this is a real, this is actually happening. Oh, this is actually happening. And when we engage like this with our partners, two things happen. I mean, we accelerate the whole time to revenue, right? Because we actually get the sales teams better aligned. We get executive commitment. We engage customers sooner, and then we can sell more effectively. But for our customers, they love it because now we're bringing the power of the ecosystem in an organized fashion. And they see, hey, these guys really understand my business issues, and they're committed to solving those problems with us. And they probably make more money too, because when you have that efficiency, that drops right to the bottom line. Yeah, yeah, and that's important for us and them. By the way, part of the business model transformation that we're driving, that's important, is I also realized we can no longer live in a siloed world. So we used to silo all of our resources, had big teams on this partner, that partner, this technology, this architecture. And what we did is we moved our sales acceleration team into a shared pool model. So now we can dynamically allocate talent to whatever the next big thing is. So HyperFlex, the latest launch or whatever, great. We can dynamically move the right talent to engage the right partners in the right sales motion. That's very elastic, very cool. Denny, we've been watching Cisco's transformation for years. Obviously networking's still at the core, but security, we go to so many shows. We see Cisco in the container space, lots of open source, software acquisitions. How's that transformation of Cisco changing and proliferating the various ecosystem models that you have to build? Yeah, so, and this is one of those things that we struggle with in certain days, right? Because if Cisco moves into a new space where we acquire a new company, not only does the sales motion sometimes change and who we sell to changes, maybe a new buying center in applications, DevOps, cloud development, but also the ecosystem changes. So we have to get smart about who we bring in. So for instance, back in the day, Cisco and a reseller, we could go sell to the networking buying center, the data center, buying center, but now all of a sudden, if we want to have a conversation around DevOps and then bring in the line of business, IT, and then these other DevOps folks, Cisco and our resellers, we can't really sit at the table and bring as much value there. So there's different vendors, like consultancies out there, companies like Zentars that can actually come to the table and help build the bridge between IT and the line of business, facilitate and drive that conversation. So to your question, we're engaging new partners like that. They don't resell anything, but they're a key influencer to connect the multiple different buying centers and they're helping Cisco and our resellers generate opportunities we wouldn't have gotten before. Yeah, I mean, to follow up on the channel, I mean, I remember back when converged infrastructure started, there were Cisco channel partners that built all data center practices, whole new lines of business when they were building it. How do you help build that kind of, you know, just multiplier effect for some of your partners to help really accelerate them, drive new businesses? Think about, you know, there's so many new areas that Cisco's tapping into. How do you help move that change? You know, people are resistant to change. They're worried about cloud. They're worried about, oh, you're taking away some of my existing lines of business where I make money. Yeah, and actually, when you think about digital transformation, right, there's the cloud, there's analytics, there's security, there's so many technologies that come into play. And our resellers have to think about how do I build a practice that includes all those different foundations? Working with one of my peers, Narav's organization, he's got this person, Andres Sintes, and we're partnered up with them to build out this new model where we can actually help assess our partners to see where they are against all these critical foundational pieces and then build the training around it. But it's not just training because a reseller has an option. Like if they're going to move into whatever this DevOps cloud space, whatever it happens to be, they have an option to build, buy or partner. They can build the capability, train their people, hire new people, et cetera, buy a company that does that already, or partner with one of those consultancies or boutique systems integrator. And that's where we're spending our time is building those new connections. Yeah, I'm wondering if you can comment on service providers too. Obviously, it's been a big customer for Cisco before. Also, there's many times we've said service provider can be the new channel for both Cisco and the partners. How do you look at that very differently than you do the enterprise? Yeah, so service provider as a channel is a big motion without a doubt because they are in those accounts and they're selling in many cases what our customers want to consume in the consumption model that they want, right? So it is critical that we play with them and we play with them effectively. What's interesting is sometimes based on the verticals or the industries or the segments, it's a different set of solutions. So sometimes it's not the motion that my team does by engaging the right ecosystem partners with them. The motion doesn't change as much. What changes is, hey, which customer are you going after or segment are you going after? Which partners really make sense and can they be delivered in the consumption model that you're looking at? So we might have to get, you know, pick the right partners and the right solutions to drive. But once we do, we can still leverage a lot of the same practices. So ACES, sales blitzes, overdrives, vertical value plays, all these cool things that we do today, you know, could fit with a service provider or any other partner. So you guys inflect those resources and go wherever you need to go. Very elastic, kind of like a cloud model. Absolutely. I got to ask you on the organizational front. Do you guys have like a big pow wow with your partners? Is it like an annual summit as you do at Cisco Live? How do you get your partners together? Is there like a... Yes, yes and yes, there's all of those. How do you guys handle the partner relationships? Yeah, so each event is a little bit different, right? Cisco Live and here, Cisco Live, Barcelona, the incredible thing about this event is we have all of the people in the world the solutions, right? The sponsors, their hardware vendors, software vendors. You know, those vendors are here, our resellers are here, our sales teams are here. So this type of event, we actually have a separate track, you know, here at Cisco Live called the partner experience. Wendy Mars kicked it off this morning and in the room, we had resellers, software vendors, hardware vendors, a bunch of different partner types in the room. And then we break out into separate tracks. So I just left actually the solution partner forum where it was no resellers, it was software vendors and all these folks talking and we had an intimate conversation with them about how we're going to accelerate our business together with them as ecosystem partners. So you do the big tent events during the live. You do your own little events with them as well. Yeah, exactly. Like your own teams, kind of like a sales kick off or whatever. And probably the most popular events is when we regionalize it and we do things like partner connections. So like the show Shark Tank, right? We can bring in four or five of these ecosystem partners in any one particular, you know, vertical or architecture and have them pitched to a room full of- Can we film that? Yeah, we should. Actually, I'd love to do one of you guys. That was a great cube action. That would be awesome. So you're really on the front line, super innovative. I love this notion of codifying and putting frameworks around the systems. Because that essentially makes it more efficient. And you can then flex for these unique situations. Because not every deployment's different. A partner might have different vertical requirements. So you can't boil a plate this. It's really one of those things where complexity you have to address at the field level. Yeah, you do, exactly. But to your point, if we can have certain frameworks, so say like a sales blitz, real actionable item, right? Sales blitz is where we do a lunch and learn, cold calling blitz, then we have what we call, I forgot what we call it, basically day two support where we can follow up on leads that come from it. We built a sales blitz originally with a partner like Alive Action, right? That plays with us in SD-WAN. And then we said, hey, this works in data protection. Let's leverage it for a Commvault or a Veeam. Hey, this also works in a healthcare application. So as we build out these best practices, we build them in a way so that they can be scaled across any architecture, any partner, any solution type. But we also build it so it can be high touch, where I use resources of my own to manage it, low touch, we just coach them on how to do it, where no touch, here it is, it's in a box, you take it, yeah, and you go build it yourself, all the best practices. So this really must have a real impact on personnel. Have you seen higher attainments and retention with salespeople? I mean, sounds motivating. Actually, what's so funny is, and this is a fact, I just heard last week, one of my teams came up and they said, hey, Denny, I talked to one of our new hires, they came into Cisco, early in career person, they were on one of these flex teams, and they've already done three different projects in three different areas. In the past, they would have been hired in the Hyperflex team or whatever, right? Now they've done whatever, Hyperflex, the network intuitive launch, and then they did something around the Apple launch. How cool is that, right, from an experience level? So the old waterfall model of group to group to group, now they can essentially go wherever the agile needs are. All right, exactly. So Denny, I know it's tough to choose favorites, but what's buzzing in your partner ecosystem? What's the area where there seem big opportunity, customers are getting excited about? Yeah, you know, a lot of what, you know, or the stories that tell the best are a lot of these customer experience stories, right? So if I think of a partner called LocalMeasure as a first, for instance, they're a software vendor, they play in retail in other areas. These stories get exciting, let me tell you it real quick, you know, first of all, when we partner with these folks, we take a customer in a folks approach. So we don't go in there and pitch product. Like, so LocalMeasure, by the way, works with Maraki and Spark. We don't go into that line of business buyer and pitch Maraki and Spark, it probably doesn't come up until later in the conversation. We really start about, hey, what's your true business issue? And typically in a retailer, they might want to do two things. So for instance, they might want to accelerate or increase the engagement of the customers so they get better loyalty and repeat buyers, right? They want people to come back to their amusement park with a retailer or whatever it happens to be. And ultimately, the way LocalMeasure can do that is they can say, hey, we can change the engagement in the store, so as a, for instance, if you go into a shoe store and you send out a tweet that says, hey, the service stinks at this shoe store, they intercept that through Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, and then they can actually correlate that information with location from a Maraki network and then send it to the store and say, hey, store associate via Spark message, right? There's a person, they're in your New York City store, they're standing right in this spot right now, they just sent out this tweet, here's their profile, go talk to them, they want help. So that engagement is very different than other types of engagements, but when we tell those stories, people see the importance of connecting technologies together, because it's multiple technologies, but also bridging the conversation between the line of business, that retail store person and IT, because you can't do it either or, you got to bring them together and deliver that type of outcome. Well, we're always looking for some good stories on theCUBE, so if you got any great stories to tell with customers, we'd love to see use cases that can really point to the future. Yeah, and actually, for things like this, like events like this, we collected 23 different wind stories here in Europe from a small set of ecosystem partners, so we can bring some of these guys on and have them tell the story directly. We love those tech athletes, they're out making it happen every day. Danny, great to see you and having theCUBE appreciate the time, and I know you had a big partner kick off meetings over there, and we appreciate your time coming on theCUBE. Yeah, thank you. Live coverage here at theCUBE in Barcelona, Spain, I'm John Furrier with Stu Miniman. More coverage after this short break. Day one of two days of wall-to-wall coverage. You're watching theCUBE, we'll be right back.