Cisco Australia increases SMB focus, hits 50 partners

Cisco plans to continue its investment in the SMB space during 2008, but claims it is not treading on the toes of its SMB-focused Linksys division.

Sara Adams, regional sales manager for SMB at Cisco Australia told CRN since the Select program was launched in Australia nine months ago, the vendor has seen strong take up from the reseller community.

“We now have 50 Australian partners on the Select program and we are now ensuring that those 50 have what they need, are starting to get a revenue stream, plus we are working on more leads so partners can close more business,” she said.

In terms of adding new partners to the program, Adams explained that Cisco has an open channel policy with the potential for new partners to join the SMB Select ranks.

“The Select program runs out of the main Cisco channels group and that ensures partners on the program have Cisco resources dedicated to them. Select partners gain marketing support and access to our low-end Unified Communications offerings.”

Adams said the size and type of partner in the Select program varies from two to three employee operations, up to larger partners with 30 plus employees.

“The SMB market is highly important to Cisco and we have doubled our resources on the space internally, while our distribution partners have also increased their focus on our SMB business,” Adams said.

Despite toasting the success of Cisco’s SMB efforts, Adams claimed there is limited cannibalisation of its Linksys division in Australia.

“Any Linksys partner automatically becomes a Cisco partner and vice-versa, but we don’t see a lot of overlap. There is maybe a 10 percent overlap, but that’s it,” Adams added.