This program being a CISCO certified program, has been defined by CISCO as follows:

• CPE used for the service is actively monitored and can be remotely monitored and configured from the provider’s network operations center (NOC), allowing the provider to troubleshoot errors in real time.
• CPE title held by Partner or End Customer (in this case Bharti Airtel is the partner).
• Service is always sold with an SLA that clearly lays out the provider’s service and support responsibility to the customer.
• Provides scalability to customers.

Cisco has traditionally had two distinct and popular type of partnerships. The first one was the Distributorship and second one was the Systems Integrator partnership. The Distributor model is a stock and sale model where the support services are purchased by the customers from a CISCO authorized service providers. The System Integrator partners sell CISCO equipment as a part of a total solution and therefore do not stock and sell. They also provide support services directly to their customers. The Managed Services partnership is a new initiative from CISCO to include service providers who have network ownership and network services capabilities.

As shown in the diagram below SI program allows Service provider to offer its specialization and support infrastructure to attain the ultimate goal of customer satisfaction.

• Tiered management services.
• NoC services for monitoring and troubleshooting customer’s network.
• CPE covered under SLA.

• Competitive advantage with less risk.
• Guaranteed performance from service-level agreements.
• Fixed costs and less capital outlay.
• Ability to focus on IT strategy, not IT integration.
• Low risk in new solution rollouts.
• Decrease time to adopt new technologies.
• Reduced technology training expense- IT manages vendors, not technologies.