How do you apply AI to one of Cisco’s largest and most complex routes to market — 2-Tier distribution? Our business with distributors and their partners is already highly automated, but applying agentic AI to this fast-growing business is producing results that go well beyond incremental improvement.
Our opportunity is to apply agent-to-agent integration across the sales, lifecycle, and operational workflows in the 2-Tier channel — increasing the effectiveness of our sellers, transforming the experience for our channel partners, and creating impactful customer outcomes.
For decades, the channel has run on APIs—reliable, but rigid, and quick to break when business needs shifted. That era is ending. Cisco is moving beyond the limitations of traditional APIs, and starting with Ingram Micro and TD SYNNEX, we’re standing up one of the industry’s first large-scale deployments of agentic integration in distribution. It’s live, and it’s already changing how partners engage with us day to day.
A Different Kind of Connection
APIs connect systems. Agents understand intent. An API call still needs someone to trigger it, read the response, and decide what happens next. An agent can handle all three on its own, continuously and at machine speed.
Across thousands of transactions a day with thousands of partners, that difference adds up fast. What used to require a support ticket now gets resolved before anyone has to ask.
Security Had to Come First
Letting systems act on their own only works if they can be trusted to behave correctly and securely at scale. The more autonomy we hand to agents, the more we need to know exactly what they’re doing—and whether it’s safe.
Many of us are using agents in our work and personal lives now, and they become more powerful the more credentials and access we give them. But that power is also a major source of anxiety, and it requires real guardrails around trust and security.
Cisco’s own infrastructure makes that possible. No agent connects to Cisco anonymously: each one is approved before it can act, and every request carries the identity of the person for whom it’s acting. Agent-to-agent opens a new channel to existing permissions, not a new kind of access. Cisco AI Defense extends that visibility across the Partner Experience Platform (PXP) and distribution, with guardrails that catch issues before they become problems. We’re not trading performance for security. We get both.
Security isn’t a footnote here. It’s the reason this was possible to deploy at all, and for our distributors, that matters more than the automation itself.
Building an Agile Partner Ecosystem
This work supports a broader approach to help Cisco and our partners win together. We innovate continuously, combining our portfolio with integrated partner solutions that deliver real customer outcomes. We react faster through the Cisco 360 Partner Program, aligning incentives so partners can build durable growth. And we scale efficiently through PXP, our digital platform that brings the tools and resources partners need into one place.
Smart automation is what makes that strategy real for partners, rather than something that just lives in a slide deck.
What’s Happening in Distribution
Some of our distribution partners are already showing what’s possible when intelligent automation, not manual integration, carries the weight of day-to-day operations. Order management is becoming largely self-correcting. Compliance and lifecycle tasks that once took hours of manual review now run automatically, backed by the same AI Defense protections securing the agents themselves. And recommendation tools can help partners point customers to the right solution, freeing up specialists for more complex tasks.
“The next wave of partner experience brings intelligence and speed together at the moment of need. Ingram Micro SMB Quick Buy combines Cisco and Ingram Micro intelligence to give our partners timely insights and faster sales pathways through our Xvantage platform, reducing friction, accelerating decisions, and creating a simpler, more responsive experience that helps them better serve customers and grow now and in the future.” — Eric Kohl, Global Vice President, Security and Networking, Ingram Micro
“The future of distribution is about more than moving transactions efficiently; it’s about orchestrating outcomes across the technology ecosystem. Our collaboration with Cisco on agent-to-agent integration is an important step toward a more intelligent, connected channel—one where AI reduces complexity, empowers partners to move faster, and helps scale the expertise needed to deliver customer outcomes. Together, we can make it easier for partners to do business, expand their capabilities, and capture new growth opportunities.” — Nate Herz, SVP and CIO, North America, TD SYNNEX
The SMB Impact
The partners who benefit most are the ones who could least afford this kind of automation before now. A five-person reseller doesn’t have a team to chase down order errors. These tools absorb that work in the background, maximizing profitability and giving smaller partners the same operational edge as their much larger competitors.
Where This Goes Next
What’s live today is a starting point, not an end state. As adoption grows across our distribution ecosystem, we expect this to expand into new parts of the partner lifecycle. The channel is shifting toward a model where the systems carry more of the load, so our people and our partners can focus on what actually grows the business.
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