Cisco’s Senior Manager ANZ Commercial Marketing, Suzanne Hansen, is currently celebrating 12 years with the company.

During a recent catch-up with The Channel – look out for the first part of that interview later this week – Hansen said that channel partners should be looking for opportunities to climb up the value stream in the face of new cloud services.

“Get out of the commodity area and take things that are hard to do and do them well,” Hansen said.

“The guys competing against each other on products and price will potentially survive but they won’t thrive. The people doing thought leadership will thrive.”

Hanson jokingly added, “And figure out what you can do with the cloud.”

Back in August we reported that Cisco’s commercial business in Asia Pacific had shown some of the fastest growth across the company in the recent years and that by placing an increasing focus on channel relationships, the firm sensed continued growth.