Cisco celebrates SME push with new products and financing

Cisco (CSCO) has celebrated the anniversary of its push into the SME market with two new unified communication (UC) products, an enhancement to its financing options and free training programme for its Select partners. Cisco will also be re-launching its “not for resale” special offer for its Select Partners which offers deep discounts on evaluation and demo units of certain products as well as seven free training sessions at its Bedfont Lakes offices in the new year.

Gordon Mackintosh, head of small business & distribution, Cisco UK and Ireland, believes that the “...network is more relevant today for the SMB and offers a fantastic opportunity for our channel.” Mackintosh thinks that the fragmented product lines of rivals like Netgear and D-Link and other SME-focused rivals gives Cisco a serious opportunity to expand aggressively into the space.

One of the more relevant new announcements is the extension of its financing programme to cover the SME range of products and Select Partner community. Financing is handled directly by Cisco, potentially at zero percent interest rates, with a value of up to £200,000.

On the product side, Cisco has launched two new SIP compliant unified communication platforms namely the UC540 and UC560. Designed as an “all in one” appliance, the UC range provides voice, application delivery, messaging and remote access. The new appliances are positioned to encourage channel partners to sell third party hosted or managed services based around a reliable client premises hardware platform.

Cisco has also extended its four-hour product replacement service to the SME market although Mackintosh believes that is going to be “best endeavour” and not guaranteed as such.

The continued commitment to the SME sector has been positively received by channel partners. “It’s not just a gimmick,” is the view of channel analyst, Keith Humphreys of euroLAN Research, “In particular, the Cisco financing arm already extends all the way through the channel and to get it down into the SMB market is a pretty smart move.”

Although Cisco is often perceived as more expensive than many of its SME-focused rivals, Humphreys sees financing, if positioned correctly, could be a real value add to smaller channel partners when offering Cisco to cash-strapped customers.

“The only problem with financing is that most SME sales include servers, workstations, applications and printers and Cisco won't finance competing product,” Humphreys adds, although he believes that in the longer term Cisco will have a more end-to-end SME offering, pointing to the well-respected Linksys portfolio as evidence of this trend.
Although cash rich, Cisco’s push into the SME and focus on bolstering its channel is a response to declining sales. In August, Cisco reported fourth quarter profits of $1.1bn down from a profit of $2bn during the same quarter a year ago.