New Cisco solutions give SMBs enterprise powers

Cisco has announced a new range of partner-targeted solutions designed to make it easier for SMBs to deploy and manage enterprise-grade technology ecosystems.

Revealed on Thursday at Cisco’s second annual APJC (Asia Pacific, Japan and China) Partner-Led conference in Bangkok, the solutions focus on helping partners simplify their offerings in areas such as security, voice communications and wireless networking.

The flagship of the new offerings, Cisco’s ISA500 integrated security appliance, integrates secure internet, spam filtering, wireless, dual WAN, site-to-site and remote VPN access with solutions for unified threat management (UTM).

“The ISA500 is a product we’ve really been dying for,” said Andrew Leigh, director of Allcom Networks, a Sydney-based systems integrator and premium Cisco partner.

Leigh said the product delivers an enterprise-grade level of security monitoring and spam filtering at an SMB price.

Allcom has a number of customers in Papua New Guinea where exorbitant internet costs coupled with high levels of spam has led to serious cost pressures, particularly on small businesses.

“In PNG you pay for bandwidth by the byte, there’s no such thing as all-you-can-eat."

Leigh said the company itself spends several thousand dollars a month providing internet connectivity for just 15 staff.

The ISA500, he said, provided an affordable and easy to deploy solution to help SMBs better manage and rein in communications costs via the cloud.

Stop: collaborate and listen

Another of Cisco’s key solutions categories is collaboration. Looking to help partners more easily sell the still nascent concept to smaller companies, it announced an SMB-oriented bundle featuring its SPA232D multi-line DECT (digital enhanced cordless telecommunications) ATA (analog telephone adaptor).

The bundle delivers what Cisco says is an affordable and reliable integrated DECT base station for routing VoIP calls over the PSTN (public switched telephone network).

It comes ready to integrate with the Cisco SPA302D multi-line DECT handsets and Cisco SPA500DS expansion module - a digital attendant console.

Dan Foster, director of US integrator MegaPath, said the SPA232D and SPA302D were “highly anticipated” products amongst its SMB and distributed enterprise customers.

“The market has been asking for VoIP services to natively encompass their wireless telephony needs of conducting calls while moving between the customer-facing storefront or front office and the back office," he said.

Cisco also released its 'easy-to-use' RV215W wireless-N VNP router, which supports several connectivity options including 3G and 4G via USB.

To further support smoother deployment of wireless networks, Cisco is offering automatic software and firmware updates for its wireless hardware.

Also included in the portfolio of solutions announced today were Cisco’s Jabber and WebEx unified communications solutions, which will become available to APJC partners through the Cisco advantage roadshow, running now in around 100 cities.

It's Cisco attempt to attack the coveted SMB market with low cost, enterprise-grade products where partners are encouraged to offset lower hardware margins with premium services revenues.

The Cisco ISA500 Series starts at $US443 ($A422) with a one-year license, including advanced security services such as web and threat protection, intrusion prevention, anti-virus and application control.

The Cisco SPA232D base station is priced at $US74 with the SPA302D handsets going for $US107. Bundled pricing starts at $US175 for one base station and one handset. The SPA500DS expansion module costs $US175.

The RV215W router starts at $US143.

David Binning attended the conference as a guest of Cisco.