The Cisco Solution Partner Program is a tiered membership program for independent software and hardware vendors that want to grow their business by creating and delivering Cisco-based solutions. We offer many valuable resources that our partners can use to build, test, market and sell their solutions more efficiently and effectively. As you saw in Bruce Klein's blog last week, Solution Partner Program is vital to the new Cisco Partner Ecosystem.

For partners in the building and testing phases, we offer Software Development Kits (SDKs), Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), sandboxes, technical and case-based support, as well as technical content related to our different technologies. Partners can also obtain demo and lab system discounts through our not-for-resale (NFR) program. Of course, once a solution has been built, it's important for partners to be able to test and certify it. With that in mind, Cisco has made testing and certification capabilities available to its partners as well.

MapR Technologies gained business growth by testing and validating their solution.

When partners are ready to market their solutions, they can take advantage of marketing resources, including press release templates. Partners simply insert key pieces of information into the template and use it to promote: 

• New membership in the Cisco Solution Partner Program
• Advancing from one membership level to the next
• Achieving Cisco compatibility with one of their solutions

It's an easy way to promote the partner company and their relationship with Cisco to the press and gain greater visibility.

Partners also have access to our Marketing Velocity site, where they can access past recordings of webinars and register for live marketing webcasts on a variety of topics that occur on a regular basis. Our Brand Exchange offers thousands of partner photos, relationship logos for the three program membership levels, and the "Cisco Compatible ingredient" logo.

When it's time to sell a solution, partners can list it in the Cisco Marketplace Solutions Catalog, the online sales and marketing channel. Partners create both a company and a solution presence, which will be visited by thousands of people every month -including customers and channel partners. Any visitor to the Cisco Marketplace can also request more information about a solution with the click of a button, and that request is sent directly to the solution partner. These valuable Marketplace leads are a free and automatic benefit of membership. To help create a Marketplace presence, there is a step-by-step process in the Solution Partner Program Handbook, which can be downloaded from the main page of the Solution Partner Program site.

Partners whose solutions are approved for Solution Incentive Program (SIP) greatly enhance their selling efforts.  SIP approval and its financial incentives make solutions more attractive to channel partners.

Hear how a KEMP Technologies leader describes the value of the program to his business.

We value our partners and have created significant resources across the solution lifecycle to support their success. After all, developers and solution builders are the lifeblood of the Internet of Everything. Members of the Solution Partner Program get access to thousands of Cisco customers and channel partners. We invite you to make full use of your Solution Partner resources today. Let us know how else we can help.