Cisco plans centers of excellence for partner education

Bangalore

October 4th, 2007

While continuing to increase focus on the advanced technologies arena, Cisco
India plans to unveil new products and solutions in the areas of unified
communications, security, wireless and data center space. According to Parag
Arora Regional Manager, Channels- Cisco India, "We believe that globally as
well as in India, advanced technologies like unified communications and wireless
are the way forward and we are working to create effective solutions for our
customers in this space. Opportunities for growth are huge across the India
market, but we believe that BFSI, government and defense promise rapid growth.
Additionally IT and ITES and Telecom would give us a lot of traction. We also
see a very high momentum in the retail, healthcare and education
verticals."

Sharing his thoughts on the choice of partners for selling advanced
technology solutions Arora said, "We have divided our partners based on the
different market segments like enterprise, corporate and mid market so that they
can effectively tap into them. We provide our partners with training pre- as
well as post sales and demo equipments. We also plan to set up 4-5 enters of
excellence across the country in order to educate customers and channel partners
about various technologies in and around unified communication and security. As
of now one such center is up and running while the others are in the development
stage."

The company also sees opportunity in the many micro verticals and would look
at tapping into them about 12-18 months later. According to Arora, the company
would continue to focus on the enterprise segment but believes that the SMB
sector holds a lot of promise. "We need to create solutions that are
customized for the SMBs. Towards that end we would roll out solutions in the
wifi and wireless space for this market in the next few months."

In order to equip partners to sell these solutions, Cisco has launched the
'Select certification' program across six cities in India, targeted particularly
at partners dealing with SMB customers. "We hope to cover about 100
partners under this program at a national level over the next six months,"
Arora indicated.

Commenting on the future trends Arora said, "Convergence of voice,
video, data and mobility is a key global trend and opportunities to grow there
are very high for partners and vendors. We also see services as another growth
area and we would maximize on the opportunities there as well."