Like: Easier Sell In Education Market

The multi-year agreements lead to better budget predictability for IT departments, which is key for the education market, making the EA appealing for partners.

"Cisco's looking to try to use this [for] some E-Rate mechanisms for K-12, which is how schools get their networking funding right now," said one top executive from a Cisco Gold partner based on the East Coast, who declined to be named. "They're looking to use this to create multi-year agreements so that the schools don't feel like they'll lose out on upgrades after so many years with the equipment – that's makes it easier to sell. They use to have to try to pre-buy [Cisco] Smart Net and by doing this, this will give [schools] a much more manageable mechanism for that."