The VETTDD 50 · UK IT channel · 2026Vendors
Joachim Mason
Managing Director, Partner and Specialist Sales, UK&I, Cisco · cisco.com/site/uk/en/index.html ↗
Cisco’s UK partner chief has moved his channel off Gold badges and onto Cisco 360, a program that scores partners on the outcomes they deliver for customers
- leading Cisco’s UK and Ireland partner business since
- 2024
- Cisco 360 partner program went live
- 25 Jan 2026
- score a partner needs for Preferred status in an architecture
- 7.5/10
- UK managed partners with multiple Preferred designations, per Cisilion
- 30
Joachim Mason has been managing director of Cisco’s UK and Ireland partner business since early 2024. He joined Cisco from IBM in May 2008, starting in its commercial mid-market team, and was appointed to lead data center for the UK and Ireland in 2014. In January 2019 he took over the region’s specialists group, according to his Cisco biography.
The end of Gold
Mason’s main job has been moving UK partners onto the Cisco 360 Partner Program, which went live on 25 January 2026 and ended the Gold, Premier and Select tiers. Partners now earn Preferred status architecture by architecture. According to one partner’s account, reported by IT Channel Oxygen, they must score 7.5 out of 10 across four measures to reach it.
Mason spent much of 2025 selling the change. “When you change something that’s been in place for many years, there’s always some hesitancy,” he told MicroScope in May 2025. The aim, he said, was to make sure partners “can drive the same or more profitability” while Cisco stopped rewarding things customers no longer value. In November he said Cisco was “spending the same, if not more” on 360 than on the old regime, as reported by IT Channel Oxygen.
Partners take up Preferred status
Large partners moved quickly to publicize their new status. London-based Cisilion said it was one of 30 UK Managed Partners with multiple Preferred designations, and boxxe, CDW, Trustmarque and Conscia also posted their results in January.
Mason’s message has since moved on to services. In July 2026 he told MicroScope that customers “are increasingly looking for outcomes rather than products”, and that software-defined networking gives partners room to sell automation, analytics and security services that bring recurring revenue.
Why it matters to the channel
Cisco 360 changes how its UK partners earn status, discounts and rebates. Scoring partners on customer outcomes and lifecycle value favors those with services and specialist skills over pure resellers. Mason has told partners that Cisco is spending at least as much on them under the new program as it did under the old one.
Mason has moved Cisco’s UK partners off Gold and onto 360, with its largest partners publicly on board, and is now pointing them toward the recurring services the program is built to reward.