Cisco Systems is offering 2,000 free OpenDNS licenses to each company attending this week's Cisco Partner Summit 2016. With roughly 1,200 partner companies at the event, that computes to roughly 2.4 million licenses, ChannelE2E estimates.
The partner licenses are not for resale. Instead, they are for partners to use within their own companies to protect their own employees. The key strategy: Get partners hooked on OpenDNS to protect their own businesses, and they're more apt to promote the security platform (and paid licenses) to end-customers. The move reinforces Channel Chief Wendy Bahr's top sales priority for conference attendees -- "Security, security, security."
Chris Dedicoat, executive VP for worldwide sales, announced the free OpenDNS licenses during the summit's final keynote today. The offer is available on per-company (not per attendee) basis to VARs, MSPs and other types of partners that attended the gathering, I believe. I don't know if or when the free offer expires, or how long the free subscription lasts.
Recurring Security Revenues
Security and monthly recurring revenues are increasingly critical to Cisco's growth plans. During a keynote, CFO and Executive VP Kelly Kramer pointed to key recurring revenue opportunities involving OpenDNS and Jasper.
“We are very deliberately shifting our business to software, subscription services and recurring revenue,” Kramer told attendees. Roughly 28 percent of Cisco’s revenues are now recurring. “We are separating ourselves from old tech” and making wise decisions that also deliver partner profitability, she said.
Cisco acquired OpenDNS in 2015 and the business has been growing rapidly. In ChannelE2E Podcast Episode 054, OpenDNS Senior Product Manager Dima Kumets described how data science is redefining the IT security landscape. We also discussed how OpenDNS addresses MSP needs regardless of end-customer size, from very small businesses all the way up to large enterprises.
