Many highly successful companies have a common characteristic- their customer care strategy is supportive of, and in alignment with, their corporate brand strategy, often driving to provide a consistent customer care experience, irrespective of the channel used for customer engagement.

Customers' expectations and demands are growing and changing rapidly. Customers today are different from yesterday. They want to be helped quickly, efficiently, and ontheirterms. Businesses must learn to successfully deliver against these customer expectations.

Cisco's broad partner ecosystem plays a pivotal role in helping businesses achieve these desired outcomes. This includes delighting their customers, and winning (and keeping) new business. Cisco collaborates every day with hundreds of established partners who have a wealth of experience and expertise in the customer care industry and our solutions. As trusted advisors, Cisco's channel partners are positioned to deliver unique value-add services.

Along with our partners, Cisco makes tremendous investments in our partner ecosystem and our shared momentum continues to build. We recently hosted Cisco Customer Collaboration Sales Summits in the Americas and in Europe, bringing together over a thousand partners, developers, and Cisco sales experts to learn and share best practices.

This year's Summits have focused on delivering the total customer experience, including driving growth and success with omnichannel, mobility, video, and cloud. Insightful sessions were tailored for every audience, delivered by experts and special guest speakers. Over two dozen sponsors featured their innovative solutions and demos in the Exhibit Hall at each summit. Awards were presented to recognize outstanding partner achievements. Additionally, the summits proved to be a networking powerhouse, providing opportunities for attendees to catch up with old acquaintances and make new business contacts.

It has been amazing watching these summits grow year after year. High ratings from the attendees validate that we are jointly making the right investments to grow our partner community. Nearly 100 percent of the attendees who participated in our event survey indicated interest in attending future summits.

As the Cisco Customer Collaboration business continues to grow at a phenomenal rate, our investment in building and cultivating our value-add partner ecosystem is the way of the future. Together with our partners, we will continue to deliver the total customer experience to thousands of businesses worldwide.