Here Are The 5 Cisco Global Gold Certified Partners




For the first time in 10 years, Cisco has created a new certification tier for partners, Cisco Global Gold, which is now the highest status in the networking giant's Partner Program surpassing Cisco Gold.

The San Jose, Calif.-based network leader said the new top tier was needed to better support global customers and make enterprise license agreements easier for partners to sell between borders. In additional to several specific requirements, the performance thresholds for achieving Global Gold status includes at least $350 million in annual Cisco revenue, an 80 percent services attach rate and a 70 percent renewal rates.

Here are the five companies that have achieved Cisco Global Gold certification.


Dimension Data

CEO: Jason Goodall

Headquarters: Johannesburg

Dimension Data is a longtime Cisco partner and one of vendor's top solution providers globally. Dimension, ranked No. 11 on CRN's 2016 Solution Provider 500 list, has won numerous awards from Cisco over its 26-year partnership, including Americas Partner of the Year Award and Services Partner of the Year Award in 2016. Last year, the pair teamed up for a massive Internet of Things project to protect endangered rhinoceroses in South Africa.

"The new Global Gold certification tier will allow us to do business with Cisco and our customers at a large scale, with much simpler processes and more benefits," said Christine Wolff, senior vice president of Dimension's Group Cisco Alliance, in a statement. "We can now more effectively deliver world-class solutions and services regardless of our office locations or those of our customers."


Ericsson

CEO: Borje Ekholm

Headquarters: Stockholm

In late 2015, Cisco and Ericsson formed a joint development pact they said would generate incremental sales for both companies, ramping to $1 billion or more for each by 2018. Cisco partners said combining the mobile and smartphone communications giant with the network leader would be an IoT game-changer. The two companies have been enhancing the partnership over the past 18 months, including the launch of integrated Wi-Fi offerings. During Cisco's second fiscal quarterly earnings call in February, CEO Chuck Robbins said the two companies have around 300 customer engagements together.





IBM

CEO: Ginni Rometty

Headquarters: Armonk, N.Y.

Big blue and Cisco have several technology partnerships in different markets including unified communications and collaboration, as well as VersaStack – an integrated infrastructure solution that pairs IBM's Storewize storage system with Cisco's networking products like UCS. Last year, the two companies sent shockwaves throughout the IoT world by revealing that IBM would combine its Watson IoT technology with Cisco's edge analytics capabilities to allow a deeper understanding of critical data at the network edge.

IBM Global Services, a division of IBM, is ranked No. 1 on CRN's 2016 Solution Provider 500 list.



BT

CEO: Gavin Patterson

Headquarters: London

The London-based global service provider's flagship Unified Communications as a Service offering, BT One Cloud, supports Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS). BT also has a cloud contact center offering based on Cisco HCS. BT is a strong global Cisco UCaaS supporter utilizing numerous offerings from the networking giant, mainly using an internal team for professional services, according to IT research firm Gartner. The two companies crafted in 2013 the BT One Cloud Cisco, which is a joint cloud-based UC service.






Orange Business Services

CEO: Thierry Bonhomme

Headquarters: Amsterdam

Orange Business Services has been a Cisco technology partner for more than 20 years. Orange leverages a slew of Cisco products and services from contact center solutions to Cisco Spark to software-defined WAN. Orange's UCaaS product, Business Together as a Service, is delivered virtualized on Cisco HCS. Orange Business Services is the business services arm of French-based global telecom provider Orange S.A.