---
title: "Cisco MSP Partner Summit 2024: Q&A"
description: "Cisco MSP Partner Summit 2024 Q&A for IT leaders weighing a managed service: how IPTel chose its monitoring platform, built support and moved to AIOps."
image: https://blog.iptel.com.au/hubfs/Blogs/Cisco%20MSP%20Partner%20Summit%202024/cisco-msp-partner-summit-2024-square-feature.jpg
---
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## Cisco MSP Partner Summit 2024: Q&A
June 7, 2024
The Cisco MSP Partner Summit is where Cisco partners hear Cisco's vision for expanding and growing their managed services propositions and market reach. In 2024 I was fortunate to be invited as a guest speaker and interviewee. In this blog, I'll share the questions I was asked and our answers, covering how we at IPTel have built and applied our Cisco Powered managed services.
---
## Partner Summit: Joining the MSP Panel
[.png?width=173&height=173&name=Cisco%20Summit%202023%20(Instagram%20Post).png)](https://blog.iptel.com.au/cisco-partner-summit-2023)As a Cisco Preferred Partner and Cisco Powered Managed Services provider, being part of the 2024 summit was a fantastic experience. Being asked onto a panel for an MSP Q&A session was a proud one. The conversation covered technology selection, internal support strategy, observability and the technologies we were building for next.
The video below is a small snapshot of a much longer conversation.
*Updated October 2026: this Q&A has been refreshed to reflect our current managed services monitoring platform, Highlight. Everything else is a record of the conversation as it happened at the 2024 summit.*
Related reading
- [Cisco Partner Summit 2023](https://blog.iptel.com.au/cisco-partner-summit-2023)
- [Cisco Live! 2024](https://blog.iptel.com.au/cisco-live-2024)
---
## Technology Selection: Evaluating and Packaging the Platform
**Q. Can you talk about the evaluation and selection of the technology from a KPI standpoint? How should it be packaged?**
A. For our [managed services](https://iptel.com.au/managed-services) offering, we use Highlight, an MSP-grade service observability platform. It lets us monitor and manage multiple clients at once from a single multi-tenant platform and produce unified reports on network KPIs.
Our evaluation was based on a few factors, the biggest of which is functionality. Highlight integrates directly with the platforms our customers run, including the Meraki Dashboard API, Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN and ThousandEyes, with SNMP and ICMP covering other devices.
It also has built-in AI for capacity forecasting and anomaly detection, so we can predict when a circuit is heading for capacity before it becomes a problem. Very cool.
Related reading
- [Building AI into our Managed Services with Highlight](https://blog.iptel.com.au/building-ai-into-our-managed-services)
- [Highlight: Service Observability for Managed Networks](https://blog.iptel.com.au/highlight-service-observability)
---
## Support Strategy: Platforms, Integration and DevOps
[](https://blog.iptel.com.au/meraki-managed-service)**Q. Talk to us about the role of platforms and how you are developing your internal strategy around it. What are its key needs and objectives that it needs to deliver?**
A. We have a monitoring platform, a ticketing platform and some additional software for customised alerting, such as text messages on events.
For us, the preference is to buy off-the-shelf monitoring and management software and then integrate the components. That way we can buy best of breed for each component and, if need be, swap out a part of the system.
Working alongside this is our internal DevOps team, which we're passionate about here at IPTel. We're continually looking for ways to improve our customer experience and internal support through Python and its ability to integrate with the APIs on many Cisco platforms. One example is a bespoke, specialised customer status and alerting dashboard we built for one of our Meraki customers.
**Pro-Tip:** If you're assessing a managed service provider, ask how its monitoring, ticketing and alerting platforms connect, and what you'll see of them. Integrated tools only help you if the hand-offs between them show up in your reports and your portal.
Related reading
- [Meraki Managed Service: Inside the MSP Dashboard](https://blog.iptel.com.au/meraki-managed-service)
- [The Network as Code: Network Programmability](https://blog.iptel.com.au/the-network-as-code)
---
## Observability: The Journey to AIOps
**Q. Can you talk through the evolution of your operations and the journey to AIOps, and its impact on your business?**
A. Our monitoring platform, Highlight, includes AI features, which means we're not limited to a basic threshold style of alert. Its anomaly detection flags sudden, unusual changes in traffic and performance, so we don't have to wait until something breaches a threshold; we can act once it starts to behave differently from the norm. Its capacity forecasting also shows when a circuit is likely to reach capacity, well before users notice.
ThousandEyes is another product we have invested in. To achieve the ThousandEyes Cisco Powered Service, we were audited by Cisco on our ability to provide ThousandEyes as a service to customers. That was an important step for us as a business into the increasingly important world of [full stack observability](https://blog.iptel.com.au/managed-services-full-stack-observability) for customers and their networks and applications.
Related reading
- [Full Stack Observability: Managed Visibility Explained](https://blog.iptel.com.au/managed-services-full-stack-observability)
- [ThousandEyes Managed Services: Networks You Don't Own](https://blog.iptel.com.au/thousandeyes-managed-services)
---
## Future Technologies: SDA Fabric and Meraki
[.gif?width=173&height=173&name=CIOs%20Guide%20to%20SDA%20Fabric%20(Instagram%20Post).gif)](https://blog.iptel.com.au/the-cios-guide-to-cisco-sda-fabric)**Q. What are the top two technology trends you're building for, how do you see yourself building for them, and what's your expectation from Cisco?**
A. I would say it depends whether you're talking Cisco or Meraki. For Cisco, it's SDA Fabric. These projects were sporadic to start with but have been getting more frequent, so we're working with a larger number of customers. The good thing about being an early adopter is that we've been there for the journey and understand the technology well. Each new install brings more procedures and new use cases, which is great.
The second major trend is Meraki in general. We've had a major increase in Meraki sales, which in turn fuels our professional services. Depending on the customer's use case, we also try to align our managed services offering to give the customer peace of mind for the first year or more of operation. If the customer relies on their network, especially if they need great Wi-Fi, our managed service is a great fit.
Related reading
- [What is Cisco SDA Fabric?](https://blog.iptel.com.au/what-is-sda-fabric)
- [Meraki Managed Services: Boost Business Efficiency](https://blog.iptel.com.au/meraki-managed-services)
---
## Cisco MSP Partner Summit: FAQs
### What Is the Cisco MSP Partner Summit?
It's the event where Cisco partners hear Cisco's vision for how it plans to expand and grow managed services propositions and market reach. The 2024 summit included an MSP Q&A panel session, and IPTel was invited to take part as a guest speaker and interviewee.
### What Monitoring Platform Does IPTel Use Today?
We use Highlight, which gives customers a live dashboard of device health, performance and open incidents across their sites. ThousandEyes can be added to our managed services for internet, cloud and SaaS path visibility.
### What Does Cisco Powered Mean for IPTel's Managed Services?
Today we hold five Cisco Powered Services, and Cisco independently audits our tools, processes, engineering practice and customer outcomes against its published standards every year.
### Does IPTel Manage SD-Access Fabric?
Yes. Our [managed Cisco Campus Access service](https://iptel.com.au/managed-services/cisco-campus-access) adds management of your SD-Access fabric for zero-trust segmentation at the Critical tier, together with our Cisco ISE managed service.
---
## Cisco MSP Partner Summit: Summary
The 2024 Cisco MSP Partner Summit was a chance to hear where Cisco is taking managed services and to share how we've built ours: integrated, best-of-breed platforms, a DevOps team that automates through Cisco's APIs, a move beyond threshold alerts to AI-assisted monitoring, and an eye on SDA Fabric and Meraki as the trends shaping what customers need next.
### Need Help With Managed Services?
If you'd like to hear more about our [Cisco Powered managed services](https://iptel.com.au/managed-services), the free 10-minute [Build Your Business Case assessment](https://score.iptel.com.au/managed-network-services) gives you a recommended service tier and the value at stake for your network.
If that's useful, [make an enquiry](https://iptel.com.au/managed-services-enquiry) or email the team at [sales@iptel.com.au](mailto:sales@iptel.com.au).
#### Related Articles
###### [Highlight: Service Observability for Managed Networks](https://blog.iptel.com.au/highlight-service-observability)
Oct 4, 2026
###### [Building AI into our Managed Services with Highlight](https://blog.iptel.com.au/building-ai-into-our-managed-services)
Oct 2, 2026
###### [ThousandEyes Managed Services: Top 5 Reasons](https://blog.iptel.com.au/top-5-reasons-thousandeyes-managed-services)
Oct 24, 2025
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