IBM Deepens Partnership with Cisco

As a part of the IBM mission to address the market demand for accelerated hybrid cloud adoption, the company has added lifecycle services to its enterprise networking business. Additionally, as a part its commitment to enterprise networking, it has achieved Cisco’s Global Gold Integrator status again. The highest Cisco partner level available, Cisco’s Global Gold Integrator status is a validation of IBM’s ability to provide complex networking solutions and services for joint customers, globally.

Businesses in today’s complex hybrid IT environment need technical advice and services to continue innovating and leveraging technologies while keeping their existing infrastructure up and running. Results from IDC’s 2022 Future Enterprise Resiliency and Spending Surveys show that in the face of economic headwinds, more than 60 percent of decision-makers polled expected to increase spending on enterprise networking.

As enterprises integrate their on-site IT infrastructure with their multi-cloud hybrid architecture, advanced networking services and support become increasingly important to meet their user’s increasing performance expectations.

Nearly 4,000 clients worldwide have turned to IBM to deliver maintenance and service solutions for Cisco products, with the goal of providing enhanced availability and performance for client network environments. This includes software updates, hardware replacements, and 24 x 7 break-fix support for clients’ Cisco hardware, applications, and operating systems. It also includes services across the Cisco portfolio such as routing, switching, security, data center, wireless, storage area networks, software-defined networking, and network and application monitoring.

To become a Cisco Global Gold partner, IBM architects, engineers, customer success managers, and sales teams have demonstrated knowledge and expertise across a broad portfolio of Cisco technology, software and services. IBM also achieved and exceeded benchmarks and metrics regarding Cisco program performance thresholds and exceeded customer satisfaction and NPS targets.

Today, more than 400 IBM remote and field engineers across 73 countries hold Cisco technical certifications. Global Gold Integrator status is another significant indicator of IBM’s dedication to and focuses on providing joint clients with world-class support. Since 1999, IBM and Cisco have collaborated across a range of services, industries and industry-leading technology solutions. We are proud to mark today’s news as another important milestone.

Looking ahead, IBM is building out comprehensive lifecycle services spanning deploy, support, optimize and refresh service offers that clients will be able to take advantage of directly from IBM or via IBM Ecosystem resell partners.

These offers are designed to provide holistic support for complex networking technology systems for Cisco and other key industry players.  IBM plans to deliver:

  • Rack and Stack – to help clients deploy and refresh network hardware (e.g., switches, routers, firewalls) based on a jointly developed plan and targeted use cases.
  • Implement Basic or LAN Configuration – to help clients deploy and configure network equipment (e.g., switches, routers, firewalls) based on a jointly developed plan and targeted use cases.
  • Assess Performance: to provide clients with a comprehensive view of their network, identify present or potential issues, and suggest steps to mitigate and optimize them.
  • SDWAN Implementation: to assist our mutual customers in adopting Cisco Viptela SDWAN deployments.

Learn more about IBM’s technology lifecycle services here. To find out more about IBM’s enterprise networking lifecycle services for Cisco, see here.