As a part of the IBM mission to address the market demand for accelerated hybrid cloud adoption, we are pleased to announce IBM has added lifecycle services to its enterprise networking business.

Additionally, as a part of IBM’s deepening commitment to enterprise networking, it has once again achieved Cisco’s Global Gold Integrator status. 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 new 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% of decision-makers polled expected to increase spending on enterprise networking. [1]

As enterprises integrate their on-site IT infrastructure with their hybrid multicloud architecture, advanced networking services and support become increasingly important to meet their users’ increasing performance expectations. Nearly 4,000 clients around the world 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 24×7 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.

Cisco Global Gold Integrator designation

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 technologies, software and services. IBM also achieved and exceeded benchmarks and metrics with regard to 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 certifications. Global Gold Integrator status is another significant indicator of IBM’s dedication to and focus 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.

Why IBM lifecycle services for enterprise networking

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 [2]. IBM is planning to deliver the following:

• 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.
• Basic or LAN configuration implementation to help clients deploy and configure network equipment (e.g., switches, routers, firewalls) based on a jointly developed plan and targeted use cases.
• Performance assessment to provide clients 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

We encourage you to find out more about IBM’s technology lifecycle services here. To find out more about IBM’s enterprise networking lifecycle services for Cisco, please see here.

[1] IDC, Budget Pressures Present Opportunity to Retire Digital Infrastructure Technical Debt More Quickly, doc #US49218422, June 2022

[2] Statements regarding IBM’s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.