By Stephen Tessitore,
Publication Date: 2026-10-30 20:00:00
Every partner conversation I’ve had this past year comes back to the same reality. Our market is moving fast, and customers are drowning in noise.
AI has collapsed the gap between idea and execution. Anyone can produce content now, in endless amounts. So customers are using every tool they have to cut through it. AI is quickly becoming their go-to tool early in the buying journey. But when it comes to verifying, designing and building the final solution, customers rely heavily on partners. In fact, partners matter more than ever, because the market is changing so quickly.
Customers are navigating complex challenges across networking, security, observability and collaboration, and they want a trusted guide to solve those problems with them. More than ever, they buy based on trust, proven expertise and real business outcomes.
That’s where the ecosystem makes the difference.
Our job at Cisco is to position partners as the difference makers they are, and to complement their effort…
