How to Build a Competitive Partnership
A Case Study of Cisco and Microsoft
Recording Date:
November 11, 2009
Price:
Free
Overview
In the summer of 2007, the CEOs of Cisco and Microsoft announced a truly powerful strategic alliance, leveraging the best networking technologies and desktop solutions from Cisco and Microsoft. The primary goal of the alliance is to help customers push the boundaries of what is possible with networks and software.
The CEOs of both companies asserted that this competitive alliance was vital to their joint success and would protect the customer’s “long-term investment” in both Cisco and Microsoft technology.
While both CEOs acknowledged that areas of competitive overlap would continue to exist, the larger message underscored their commitment to the customer and the benefits of hybrid Cisco/Microsoft solutions.
You too can succeed in building a competitive strategic alliance by understanding how and why the Cisco and Microsoft alliance placed customer benefit ahead of all other goals.
During this Webcast, you’ll learn how a competitive partnership can provide better industry solutions through simultaneous collaborative investment and marketplace competition. In addition, you’ll understand how.
What You Will Learn
Competitive partnerships can be a powerful tool for growing your business and prospering while satisfying your customer’s increasingly complex demands. Join us as we explore one partnership that is working and some of the lessons learned, including:
- Why Cisco believes these complex relationships are strategic to the company’s long-term success
- Three biggest challenges that have occurred and what has been/is being done to address them
- How Cisco and Microsoft can have a successful competitive alliance that is both customer-driven and also drives new market opportunities for each
- Three most valuable lessons learned when balancing extensive collaboration with vigorous competition
- Five elements that form the foundation of Cisco’s Playbook strategy for ComPartners
While attending the Webcast is FREE, reservations are required.
About the Presenters
Greg Fox, Chief Marketing Officer, Cisco Strategic Alliances, oversees worldwide marketing strategy and programs for Cisco’s primary alliance relationships. Before Cisco, Fox spent more than 10 years in various alliance, channels, marketing, business development, sales, and engineering roles with WordPerfect Corporation, Compaq Computer, and Novell. A published author and featured speaker, he serves on the Board of Directors of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals and is a founding member of the Conference Board's Center for Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability.
Alex Suri, Director, New Global Alliances, Cisco Strategic Alliances, is focused on building new alliances for Cisco within the software industry. He has over 20 years of management experience in Information Technology. He has led IT initiatives at over a dozen Fortune 500 companies creating in excess of $1B in documented cost reductions. He was a member of Cisco's original e-commerce team, where he spun out to found Intellify Inc., later sold to a Silicon Valley systems integrator. Suri returned to Cisco to establish and lead the Microsoft Alliance team that organized the historic Cisco/Microsoft CEO event in 2007.
Greg Mihran, Senior Manager, Business Development, Cisco Strategic Alliances, is responsible for developing new product and services initiatives for Cisco’s largest global alliance partners. He has specialized in vertical industry, data center and consumer solutions. Mihran has over 25 years of high technology industry experience, including five years running his own management consulting firm as an interim executive for Silicon Valley start-up companies. Prior to that, he held various general management positions at Hewlett-Packard Company, where focused on new ventures, business development, global accounts management, channel solutions and product marketing.