Brief

Cisco to offer customised solutions to SMBs

The company has identified a new commercial vertical comprising of small and medium businesses, and chalked out a strategy to provide customised solutions to this segment. By Neeraj Gandhi

Cisco has announced its intentions to tap the rapidly growing market for IT and networking of Small and Medium Businesses in India. The firm has identified a new commercial vertical, comprising of small and medium businesses and has laid down plans to focus on the same.

Under this new vertical, Cisco plans to target the small of small businesses (with 5-99 employees), the small businesses (with 100-249 employees) and the medium businesses (with more than 250 employees) segment. For this purpose, Cisco will adopt a three-fold strategy which includes; offering of product and services; partner development; and territorial expansion.

Cisco has plans to increase its strong distributor base of 1,500 by adding another 600. The firm will also expand its reach in 16 smaller cities and towns such as Lucknow, Bhubaneshwar, Baroda and Coimbatore.

“After focusing mainly on large businesses, this is the first major step by Cisco towards the SMB segment. There are 7.6 million SMB in India, and they all require operational efficiency, customer responsiveness, and cost containment and network security. Cisco sees a huge opportunity in this space,” says Pramodh Menon, Senior Vice President, Commercial, Cisco India and SAARC.

“Cisco provides holistic, integrated and simple solutions/products, rather than ad hoc point products that enable SMBs to plan a long term technology strategy, and create real business value and gain a competitive edge,” he adds.

In addition, Cisco will also introduce 30 different tailormade products for SMBs in the next 12 months. These products will be in line with the already available product range, which includes routing, switching, wireless security and unified communications. In addition the firm will constantly monitor and promote its existing solutions like the Cisco Capital-EasyLease programme launched last month, which enables SMBs to adopt state-of-the-art network technology quickly and easily, with minimal initial investment.

Cisco has identified education, manufacturing, retail, automotive and IT-enabled services as the key focus verticals.