{"slug": "empowering-our-partners-to-win-in-the-agentic-ai-era", "title": "Empowering Our Partners to Win in the Agentic AI Era", "summary": "Cisco announced at Cisco Partner Summit 2026 the general availability of Cisco IQ Partner Support – Standard, which partners can integrate into their own platforms and AI agents via open APIs and a new Cisco IQ MCP Server. Cisco also launched a $1 million Cisco Builders Challenge prize pool for partners building managed services on Cisco IQ, and introduced Model Context Protocol servers for its network platforms as a standardized bridge between AI tools and live network data. The announcements, made as the Cisco 360 Partner Program nears its first full year of deployment, add Ecosystem Deal Registration and dedicated paths for Advisors and Developers, alongside Model Foundry for discovering, evaluating, fine-tuning and running Cisco's purpose-built AI models on customer data.", "body_md": "The agentic AI era is here, and it is reshaping the demands on enterprise infrastructure at an unprecedented pace. AI workloads and agentic workflows have become mission-critical, and the network has become both the vital foundation and the primary risk vector.\n\nAt Cisco Partner Summit 2026, we are putting tools, incentives, and insights directly into the hands of our partners to ensure you can lead this next major wave of innovation.\n\n## Building an agile partner ecosystem\n\nTrue ecosystem agility requires a program that evolves as quickly as the market moves. With the Cisco 360 Partner Program nearing its first full year of deployment, we’re [furthering our investments](https://blogs.cisco.com/partner/you-asked-for-more-money-and-more-time-heres-both) in rewarding every type of partner for the unique value they bring to our shared customers. Whether you’re an advisor shaping strategy, a developer building solutions, or a distributor enabling transactions, we’ve designed new ways to recognize the importance of your contributions:\n\n- **Ecosystem Deal Registration** the influence that shapes a deal.\n- New dedicated paths for **Advisors and Developers** provide a new way of recognizing and giving credit to these partners for their pre-sale role.\n\nThese updates provide a unified value chain that benefits all of our partners at every step of the customer lifecycle.\n\n## Cisco IQ: Turning data into high-margin growth\n\nWe’re also proud to announce the [general availability](https://blogs.cisco.com/news/cisco-iq-is-the-engine-partners-are-the-business) of **Cisco IQ Partner Support – Standard**. This isn’t just a management tool – it’s a growth engine.\n\nBy integrating Cisco IQ into your own platforms and AI agents via open APIs and the new Cisco IQ MCP Server, you can move from reactive support to proactive advisory. With new capabilities like Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), real-time lifecycle insights, and AI-powered playbooks for quantum-readiness and end of vulnerability support management, you can now secure your customers’ environments while unlocking new, repeatable, high-margin services revenue.\n\nTo further support your business, we’re also launching the Cisco Builders Challenge, putting up a $1 million prize pool early next year for partners who build and scale innovative managed services on Cisco IQ. With global and regional prizes, we’ll be looking for creativity, impact and how well partner services scale. Keep an eye out for terms and conditions coming soon.\n\n## Unified, resilient, secure, and AI-ready infrastructure\n\nAs AI agents scale, so does the risk of performance bottlenecks and identity-based threats. To stay competitive, partners need to deliver infrastructure that is as intelligent as the applications running on top of it. Today, Cisco is making this possible through [several critical innovations](https://blogs.cisco.com/news/powering-partner-potential-in-a-world-of-agentic-ai):\n\n- **[Cloud Control & Model Foundry](https://blogs.cisco.com/ai/cisco-model-foundry-partner-summit)** : Cisco Cloud Control is a shared platform that gives teams and AI agents a unified environment to manage infrastructure and resolve issues. We’re expanding Cloud Control with Model Foundry, a new service that makes it easy to discover, evaluate, fine-tune, and run Cisco’s purpose-built AI models on your own data, all in one place. Model Foundry also provides exclusive early access to Cisco’s latest model versions and weights ahead of broader release.\n- **ThousandEyes, built-in** : We are embedding always-on ThousandEyes intelligence natively into Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 access points, enabling automated background testing, strengthening customer trust in agentic actions.\n- **Agentic integration** : We’re introducing Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers for our network platforms that can act as a standardized bridge between AI tools and live network data, eliminating the need for partners to build and maintain complex custom connections.\n- **Quantum readiness** : We are unveiling the industry’s first Wi-Fi 7 access point with quantum-resilient capabilities, helping to future-proof our customers’ infrastructure.\n- [**Privileged Infrastructure Access**](https://blogs.cisco.com/security/cisco-rethinks-privileged-infrastructure-access) : Through our partnership with Teleport, we are bringing just-in-time, just-enough access to Cisco routers and switches, so network teams keep critical work moving and privilege expires when the work is done.\n- **Reducing exposure on more devices:** Live Protect vulnerability shields reduce the exposure on Cisco devices between disclosure and the permanent software fix. We are extending this capability to include Cisco routers, campus gateway, and firewall products.\n\n## The agentic shift is underway\n\nThe shift we’re experiencing towards agentic infrastructure is likely to be the greatest opportunity for our partner community in decades. By combining the innovations announced today with the strength of the Cisco 360 Partner Program, we are empowering you to turn the complexity of the agentic AI era into a competitive advantage for you and for your customers.\n\nI encourage you to [explore these new offerings](https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/r/newsroom/en/us/a/y2026/m10/cisco-expands-partner-opportunity-with-new-cisco-360-program-updates-high-yield-customer-experience-offerings-and-ai-ready-innovations.html) at Partner Summit and connect with your Cisco teams to see how we can accelerate your growth together.\n\n### Stay up on Thought Leadership from Cisco\n\nGet the latest blogs from Cisco Executives in your email.\n\n[Subscribe to the Executive Platform](https://app.feedpress.com/e/mailverify?feed_id=CiscoExecutivePlatform)\n\n### Executive Perspectives\n\nNavigate the latest technology trends and get solutions with the help of Cisco executives.\n\n[Go to Executive Perspectives](https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/executive-perspectives/index.html)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/empowering-our-partners-to-win-in-the-agentic-ai-era", "canonical_source": "https://blogs.cisco.com/news/moving-first-and-fast-empowering-our-partners-to-win-in-the-agentic-ai-era", "published_at": "2026-10-26 19:55:51+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-26 20:12:50.209803+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "agent-protocols", "ai-infrastructure", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Cisco", "Cisco Partner Summit 2026", "Cisco IQ", "Cisco IQ Partner Support – Standard", "Cisco IQ MCP Server", "Cisco 360 Partner Program", "Cisco Model Foundry", "ThousandEyes"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/empowering-our-partners-to-win-in-the-agentic-ai-era", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/empowering-our-partners-to-win-in-the-agentic-ai-era.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/empowering-our-partners-to-win-in-the-agentic-ai-era.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/empowering-our-partners-to-win-in-the-agentic-ai-era.jsonld"}}