Ingram, Cisco Team On SMB Leasing Program

Called Cisco Express Leasing, the program is slated to be announced Jan. 8. Cisco Capital has extended its zero percent progress payments promotion through July 28 to Ingram Micro Cisco-certified partners on deals of $50,000 or more. Resellers will receive payments on a negotiated schedule, based on deployment milestones, while end users begin making payments once deployment is complete. During the initial 120-day period, Cisco won't accrue finance charges.

VARs must hold the Cisco IP Communications Specialization to participate.

"It allows us now to really scale this thing and reach smaller resellers that we are not able to reach directly," said Maryann Von Seggern, director of worldwide channel development at Cisco Capital. "Now they can get the one-stop shop through Ingram."

Von Seggern sees distributor partnerships as an integral part of Cisco's play for share in the SMB market. Cisco started its leasing programs at the beginning of last year.

"I honestly believe they're critical. If you think about it, a year ago [we were] starting at ground zero. In the pace we're [at], we're making tremendous inroads," she said. "Cisco and other manufacturers use the channel to be able to scale and to grow."

Ingram Micro is making a push to get more of its SMB VARs involved in leasing products and services to customers.

"We've spent a lot of time this year retrenching our efforts around financing. If you look at something like leasing, if you look in the channel, we haven't seen the demand we anticipated," said Peter DiMarco, vice president and general manager of VAR sales for Ingram Micro U.S.

Bill Bickerton, senior operations manager for Ingram Micro Financial Services, said the Santa Ana, Calif., distributor plans to spend significant resources over the next two years to educate VARs about leasing so they, in turn, can educate their customers about it.

"We can really do just about anything when it comes to leasing. We have the partners," Bickerton said. "We have a wide range of partners that will accommodate any program. We have a government and municipal program. We have programs that offer a dollar-out option, meaning pretty much the customer owns that product at the end of the lease. Also we have a FMV -- fair market value -- program that will allow customers to pay rent for what they're using."