Partners key to Cisco’s operations in China

China continues to be an important market for Cisco as it contributes significantly to the AI network and security vendor’s growth and success. With over a 150% year over year growth, the vendor relies heavily on its partners to operate in China.

A leading Cisco partner in China, ECCOM has grown its business from a small startup to a leading Chinese technology services provider that has been monumental to Cisco’s operations in China.

According to Dingwen Chen, CTO of ECCOM, Cisco has not only been a great partner for them but also a great mentor, especially when it comes to adopting advanced technology methodologies and building stronger supporting systems.

“We have had a relationship with Cisco for over 30 years. Cisco used to be very strong in networking from the beginning era of the Internet. And now, they are empowering everything on the network with their emerging technologies,” said Chen.

Looking at the customers that ECCOM supports with Cisco, Chen explained that they have many MNC customers who choose Cisco because they feel it’s the best choice of the product and solution and also because they will need to follow national policies.

“There are businesses, not only in China, but also for the global. So, when they just choose the solution, they want a solution that has a unified platform and unify the solution. We can just use in China and also in APAC and in Europe. So, in their opinion, they will think that we will just use Cisco as the first choice for them. Apart from the financial sector, MNCs are our biggest customer coverage,” said Chen.

Chen also pointed out that for manufacturing and retail clients, they would choose to use Cisco in their global operations.

An ecosystem partner

Adam He, GM of USA BU for ECCOM mentioned that ECCOM has also been a Splunk partner for a long time and has built some localization platform on top of Splunk before the Cisco acquisition.

“We can see ourselves becoming a one-stop local partner for Cisco products. And we’re providing support and the full life cycle service to our customers,” added He.

He mentioned that although ECCOM is headquartered in China, they have presence globally, including in the US and a strong interest in Southeast Asia. For operations in the US, he explained that the focus is on enabling Chinese companies that have expanded out of China, especially in their technology infrastructure.

“We have a few clients here in the US. They're in solar energy, storage and such. They come over from China, and we build everything Cisco from the Wi-Fi networking. We link them with Cisco MES, AGVs in their production lines and line up with them. And also, they're fully secured for the AGV, everything,” said He.

In conversations with the Cisco Wi-Fi 7 team, He also pointed out that some clients in the US need that because of the automation implementation they are running in their local factories. This is to solve the shortage of workers they have in these factories in the US.

“So, we found that there's big requirements on that. We feel like Cisco may have more opportunity to sell more because in China, there is a lot of big companies. Customers want the most advanced products from outside of China in the world. But if there's something limited, like Nvidia is not available, Cisco is wide available in their box of kind of solutions. We will see some new opportunities for Cisco next year. It's a bright side for ECCOM and Cisco,” added He.

Cisco 360

Commenting on the new Cisco 360 program, He stated that the new program is more focused on solutions, empowering partners and making customers happy.

At the same time, He added that as ECCOM had already achieved every advanced partnership in the previous program, they do feel a bit nervous about Cisco 360.

“We train so many people, we achieve everything, every single advanced master's certification in Cisco. We should finish the certification. Now there's a new one. But we understand it's actually very necessary for both Cisco and partner to evolve from traditional stuff into the cloud and then even AI. So, we see some very good points coming out, especially from incentive programs in terms of cross-selling because ECCOM is a partner for all the best equipment from Cisco. So, we feel like we're in a better position to make more money,” explained He.

He also pointed out that ECCOM has a dedicated team to working with Cisco's partner programs, focusing on how to train their teams and their pre-sales teams to tune in to the new programs.

“I think our partnership with Cisco will get better. We have a more dedicated Cisco sales team to navigate more complex local markets. We'll be more focused on Cisco solutions, how to do the processing, and such. Because Cisco 360 is a program that is actually on the good side for us. And we have consolidated our existing organizations to fit in that program,” concluded He.