Cisco gets aggressive about small businesses & UC

Boston: 'During hard times, you run faster to keep pace,' keeping that mantra in mind, in its three-day Partner Summit, Cisco unveiled one offering after the other for various business segments. Whether it was unified communication or small business, a big solutions provider or a reseller they unveiled products, trainings and new partner programs. The partner summit had something for everyone.

While elaborating about the importance of small business  (SB), Rick Moran, VP-Small Business Networking, Cisco said, “Small businesses are essential since 70 percent of all new jobs that are created worldwide are done in this segment. Also SBs are able to capitalize on economic growth faster than any large company."

Adding further Ian Pennel, Sr VP-SB Technology, Cisco said, “In the SB segment one size does not fit all. That is the reason why we have more than 100 products already available as our offering for the segment. And to add further value proposition for our partners, we are launching new products under Cisco SB Pro series and all the Linksys products are being rebranded as Cisco SB products.”

The new Small Business Pro line-up includes the ESW 500 Series switch and the SPA8800 IP Telephony gateway, which allows customers to connect their open source IP PBX to existing analogue phones and fax machines.

A new introduction in the SB series is PVC300 IP camera.Coinciding with the launch, Cisco also doubled rebate amounts for SMB accredited partners and introduced a Small Business Performance Accelerator aimed at improving partner profitability. It also tweaked its training programs to ensure that partners are in line with Cisco's go-to-market strategy in the segment.

Announcing special offers for partners and resellers, Andrew Sage, VP-Small Business Sales Worldwide, Cisco said, “We are looking at giving enhanced profitability to our sub-distribution and reseller partners. We are announcing instant discounts of up to five to seven percent on projects which see migration from Linksys to Cisco SB series products. That apart there are some more incentive price schemes that we are unveiling. We are also looking at driving business or live leads to partners from our website. That apart for our partners we also have a new 'Buy Now' button on specific products on the website which would give them the advantage of sourcing products at special low prices for a stipulated period of time.”

Day two of the summit saw a focus on technology, and unified communication. It also saw all the keynote speakers taking a jibe at the newly unveiled HP and Microsoft Unified Communication tie-up.

In his keynote  Don Proctor, Senior VP-Software, Cisco taking a jibe at the alliance said, “HP and Microsoft's approach lacks networking credibility of its own. I am doubtful that customers will be willing to make a forklift upgrade from Cisco existing technology to adopt this new set of solutions.” Proctor also claimed that the agenda behind the tie-up according to him was that HP and MS wanted to go direct to the customers and cut the partners out of the immense opportunity that existed.

To build up its data center offering the company introduced a dedicated data center partner program and individual certifications to drive take-up of its unified computing architecture. This was accompanied by the launch of its range of rack-mounted servers.

The new Data Center Channel Solutions Program is aimed at enabling the channel to sell standardized offerings using products from Cisco as well as its data centre alliance partners. It will sit separately from the vendor's Premier, Silver and Gold go-to-market channel programs.

Cisco has also expanded its Unified Computing Systems products line with a new range of three rack-mounted servers. To sell the products, partners will need to sign up to Cisco's new Authorized Partner Program, which involves completing its DataCenter Network Infrastructure Specialization (DCNI). They will also need to have previous server experience.

To further push partner profitability in the datacentre, Cisco partners will now be able to access rebates for selling Unified Computing, storage, switching and WAN optimization products through its established Value Incentive program (VIP).

On the sidelights outlining the importance of APAC in the scheme of things Owen Chan, President-Asia Pacific Operations, Cisco said, “There are huge opportunities in the region for adoption of technology and for using ICT to enhance the quality of life and productivity. Newly introduced architectural play and collaboration will help us in the new markets in getting better foothold. This theater is very important for Cisco as 10 percent of overall global business for Cisco comes from APAC.”

During its conference the thrust was on partner training and unified communication. Putting APAC perspective to both Chan added, “In this region we have trained 3,200 partners face to face and over 4,000 partners have been trained online by us. As far as UC is concerned, the interest level is very high and out of the 300 DCNI certified partners that exist worldwide, 100 partners are from the APAC itself."

Talking about the small business opportunity in the region Chan said, “we have 17 percent marketshare in the SB segment in APAC and we are very competitive in this segment. And we are sure that market growth in APAC in this segment will be much higher than what is being projected for worldwide.”

Elaborating specifically about India Chan said, “When the Indian economy turns around ITeS is something will see very strong growth.”

Gung-ho about the investments that the Indian government is making in IT infrastructure he added,  "Tapping the options that are now available Cisco has just signed an MoU with GIFT in Gujarat and you will very soon hear of another such MoU with a significant state in India. Defense is another sector which is seeing strong investments. My take on the situation is that as a country India needs to improve its IT infrastructure and transform it but it also needs to get away from its heavy dependence on ITeS. We as Cisco are going to be bold, decisive and aggressive in the Indian market.” (The author was hosted in Boston by Cisco.)