Supporting partners with advanced solutions integration and enablement

Agility matters. As unpredictability reigns, our customers are continuing to build business resiliency: keeping people connected, businesses secure, and automating processes for the workforce. The bedrock for all of this, of course, is IT and cyber resilience, but the IT solutions customers need are often just as unique as the challenges that need to be overcome.

That's where theCisco Solutions Readiness Engineering (SRE) Labscome in - a new resource for partners to help increase technical capacity, reduce the time needed to achieve proficiency, decrease deployment times, and ultimately lead to quicker customer adoption of solutions.

But how are the SRE Labs different from other existing Cisco resources? The SRE Labs provide a live environment for Cisco engineers and partners to explore the latest technologies and cross-architecture solutions through real world examples and demonstrations.

Here are a few types of sessions the SRE Labs offers and how partners can make the most of them:

Tech Talks

Tech Talks are given on architecture-related topics, from enterprise networking, collaboration, the data center and cross architecture development. These tech talks dive into the specifics on how to deploy, manage, and operate the Cisco solutions within the SRE Labs, and typically take the format of a broadcast webinar.

Have a specific topic in mind? Partners can also request custom or one-time tech talks for a group of engineers or sellers to address a specialized need.

Hands-on Labs

Partners can tap into the SRE Labs for hands-on experience with Cisco solutions.  One unique benefit of SRE is that all solution equipment that is part of the lab is physical hardware instead of virtual representations - meaning partners can build from the bare metal up to the solutions level.

There are currently over 30 labs available on enterprise networking, data center, collaboration, cross-architecture and more, including:

• The Cisco SDA Migration lab: This lab walks participants through the process to transform a complete traditional (core, distribution, access) network into an SD-access fabric accommodating wired and wireless users.
• Day2 OPs ACI lab:  A lab created for field engineers, system engineers, architects and others who would like to familiarize themselves with ACI concepts and operations of the Network Assurance Engine through a hands-on approach.
• Webex Integrations and Bot: In addition to the many different functions built into Cisco Webex, we have also made several development tools available for companies interested in customizing their Cisco Webex experience. This lab introduces participants to the Cisco Webex API and bot integrations.

Custom Sessions

What truly sets the SRE Labs apart from other resources is the unique ability to provide enablement through custom engagements that are defined by the partner, Cisco team and SRE. Previous custom sessions have focused on deploying multiple architectures, third party capabilities, or solutions integrations.

Through these customer sessions, partners have the ability to prove concepts in the labs with SRE engineers, which can provide the technical enablement needed with customers.

Partner success is our number one priority, and the SRE Labs play a key role. We see a future powered by SaaS and cloud-delivered networking, and ensuring our partners are equipped with the skills and knowledge they need to deliver these solutions to customers of all sizes is vital.

View the Solution Readiness Engineering At-a-Glance document*

for more resources and information on how to arrange an SRE Labs session

*this link requires a Cisco Partner login