The Cisco team has been working closely with partners for the past 18 months to map out the evolution of our value-based program. We strongly believe that the direction we are taking will create opportunities for growth, differentiation and profitability for our partners.

Customers more and more need a partner who can integrate all these technologies together, and this is one of the foundational elements we want our program to have going forward. But they sometimes need from partners a level of depth, so we wanted to identify the ones that have that level of depth or breadth.

This is the opportunity for the specialized voice or data partners to brand themselves as a Master in those technologies. We'll be adding new Master categories over time.

We're trying to use the carrot and not the stick.

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

Our goal is to preserve the past using 21st century technology.