Addressing this point specifically.
Cisco gold partnership requires minimum
4 X CCIE's
They're not that common in Perth, and one of the restrictions with this certification is that it is NON transferable from one company to another within 12 months, to stop churn / making them a commodity. They're also a high value certification, not something you can do online, expect a salary of 140k+ if you hold one.
They have ONE.
Another requirement is a 24/7 help desk, something cirrus don't have, and would struggle to have in place by the March deadline, in fact this will impact the partner support contracts they took over from Amcom, I know several companies that were already looking at options of moving those contracts to another partner.
This is not to mention the other specialities required and the minimum customer references of a certain size.
Rest of the requirements can be found here
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/partne...nnel-partner-program/certifications/gold.html
Source. I work as a network lead for an ASX top 20 in Perth, it's a small place and I know most of the companies and staff,
