Linksys in small business communications play

Cisco-owned Linksys has unveiled a new brand selling an IP-based services platform targeted squarely at the small business market.

The Linksys One Hosted Small Business System bundles business-quality voice, video, data networking, business applications and high-speed internet access through a single connection provided by local hosted service provider IP Systems.

Linksys is providing a services router, colour IP phones and analogue voice gateway.

The bundle would also include security, management, monitoring and quality-of service for Voice-over-IP provided by IP Systems and on-sold by resellers, said Graeme Reardon, regional manager for Australia and New Zealand at Linksys.

Other service providers would come on board in the future, Reardon said.

The package would be trialled in early January by a limited number of certified resellers and end users, he said. General availability would be in mid-2006.

“It’s quite straight forward for VARs (value-added resellers) to install these services and quick for the customer to add new devices,” he said.

The “sweet spot” for this service was companies with 50 users with a maximum of 100, he said.

The bundle would generate a lot of interest from both voice and data resellers, he said. They could also benefit from a recurring revenue stream generated by sales of this bundle, he added.

It was also “significantly more affordable” for a customer to purchase this solution that buying a PBX, data solution, firewall and VPN services separately, he said.

It would be sold through Linksys’ distribution partners LAN Systems, Ingram Micro, Express Data and Multimedia Technology.