Customer Success through the Cisco IT Internship Program

Cisco on Cisco is a key program that collaborates across various groups within Cisco to support Sales by sharing the story of IT with customers, partners, and internal employees. The Cisco IT Internship Program is a special version of the Cisco on Cisco program that nominates employees (mostly experienced or manager level employees) from a Cisco customer or partner company and have them join Cisco temporarily as a contracted employee. These employees get to experience Cisco’s environment in a two-to-six week span.

Program contents are designed and conducted according to the customer’s latest requirements. Different customers will have different as-is statuses, IT strategies, gaps and improvement opportunities. Therefore, when Cisco IT organizes this internship program, we work with the customer and Cisco Sales together to find out how to set up the learning sessions, demos, and visiting tours to help the customer learn and experience Cisco technologies, productions, and services. In the past 3 years, we had several important Japanese private and public sector customers and partners participate in this program.

In this article, I will introduce Fujitsu as an example for explaining how Cisco IT shared our experience and knowledge with the customer and helped the Sales team via this program. Fujitsu is one of the biggest Internet of Things (IoT) companies in the world and has had an important partnership with Cisco for many years. Their company size happens to be similar to us, with about 160,000 employees (includes regular, contract and partner employees) worldwide. Like Cisco, Fujitsu is on their journey of digital transformation, rolling out remote working and collaboration technology, shifting from on-premises to multi-cloud and in progress of rebuilding the company’s cybersecurity platform and data protection processes. Based on Fujitsu’s requirements, Cisco Japan IT composed and rolled out the below program content to help facilitate their IT mission.

Requirements from Fujitsu vs. Cisco IT Program Content	Outputs and feedback from Fujitsu
Year 2017 [Fujitsu requirements] Understanding Cisco IT efforts such as security operation, monitoring system and infrastructure installation of data centers, analyzing gaps with Fujitsu, and to reference Fujitsu’s data center operation. [Internship program content] Six week program that covers learning sessions in Tokyo office, visits in India and a U.S. campus. Tokyo Japan Office – Learning session on IT governance, ITaaS, Cisco network, DNA, SD-WAN, network security, Cisco IT Elastic Infrastructure Services (CITEIS), Agile, etc. Cisco Bangalore office – Safe Facility Operation Center, Operation Command Center, and security operation learning. Cisco RTP (Research Triangle Park) office – Visiting for data center tour, data center architecture & technology learning and info sharing with local IT staff from RTP data center
Year 2018 [Fujitsu requirements] Understand the security governance, security incident monitoring, management and response process of Cisco. [Internship program content] Six week program that covers learning sessions in Tokyo office and visits in India and Shanghai campus. Tokyo Japan Office – Learning session on IT governance, Security & Privacy Protection Commitee, cyber security, Cloud & Application Security Provider Remediation (CASPR), Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT), Talos, and data strategy. Cisco Bangalore office – InfoSec, CSIRT team, Safe Facility Operation Center, and Operation Command Center Cisco Shanghai office – Learning session on Box security, iCAM application, end device monitoring, security incident tracking and response process, and CASPR process.

Fujitsu and Cisco created a great relationship from this program and it shows by the gratitude that Fujitsu shares with us. As we were coming to a close with the internship program, Fujitsu shared some great feedback that we are very proud of and look forward to continuing as we more forward with this program.

Thanks to all our Sales team’s hard work and IT teams’ contribution. We will continue to keep a strong relationship with Fujitsu.In summary, the advantages of the Cisco IT Internship Program are:

• Reliable experience and feedback. Employees from customer companies are given a Cisco office badge, computing device like a Lenovo PC, and access to Cisco’s intranet. They are able to see the whole picture and experience real Cisco life by themselves and the feedback from them to their managers/teams after the program is 100% what they saw, felt and learned.
• Enough time for deep diving on specific requirements. IT holds pre-meetings with the customer and Sales team before the program kick off. Each internship program is customized based on the customer’s latest requirements. The program content should help the customer find out the gaps between their IT final goal and how Cisco IT overcame barriers by using Cisco technologies, tools, productions and processes. By experiencing Cisco for several weeks, it gives the customer enough time for their participants to digest the knowledge and potentially help the customer identify their IT roadmap.
• Building a relationship between customer and Cisco. From the pre-meeting, kick off, program execution to program completion, all participants – IT resources and managers from both sides meet and sync up with progress updates. Visiting happens between Sales team, cross functional IT teams and senior managers of both companies. Both sides come to understand each other’s IT strategy and mission. Participants from the customer company work together with many Cisco IT teams and establish a friendship and relationship with various IT functions. Even after the program’s finish, Cisco IT opens the door for follow up, Q&A and engagements with customers.