Linksys One Has Its Coming Out Party
At a press and analyst event in San Francisco to commemorate Linksys' onslaught on the small business market, company executives also announced a revamped Cisco service node that powers the Linksys One solution, and several new switches and routers for remote and branch offices.
Linksys One all-in-one service routers, IP phones and VoIP gateways are the cornerstone of Linksys' small business strategy, in which the vendor is seeking to move beyond its traditional consumer/SOHO focus.
Version 2.0 gives Linksys One the ability to support up to 100 users and to link up to five different sites using VPN connections for voice and data, said David Tucker, senior director of product development for the Connected Office Business division at Linksys, San Jose, Calif.
Another feature called single number reach gives small business customers the ability to 'move' calls between Linksys One and their cell phone, he added.
"This is our coming out party for Linksys One," Tucker said.
Scott Holcomb, CEO at Holcomb Enterprises, a Mission Viejo, Calif.-based solution provider, says the addition of PBX features will serve as a springboard for Linksys One in the market.
"Without the PBX they were kind of going nowhere. If you're going to bet on VoIP, you have to have a full PBX, otherwise it just ends up being a dead phone a lot of the time," Holcomb said.
Version 2.0 is focused on ease of deployment for small businesses that want to quickly get up and running on VoIP, and allows the Linksys One solution to automatically discover devices on the network and configure quality of service and VLANs, Tucker said.
"Linksys One gets the customer up and running in one hour or less," he said.
The new Cisco services node boosts the scalability of Linksys One deployments and handles provisioning, billing, management, backup, call routing and security, Tucker said.
"This is where the VAR and service provider can manage customers through a single portal and [what] allows it to be simple to manage and administer," Tucker said.
Linksys also announced its Linksys One Ready label, which denotes products that can be deployed in standalone fashion but also work within a Linksys One deployment. The vendor also rolled out two new Linksys One service routers, the SVR200 and SVR3500, which include SIP firewall, SIP proxy, and handle auto-discovery and configuration of Linksys One devices.
Despite the progress Linksys has made with its VoIP offerings, some partners of both companies are wondering about whether there's a line between Cisco's VoIP strategy and that of Linksys.
Daniel Duffy, CEO at Valley Network Solutions, a Fresno, Calif.-based VAR, said he likes what Linksys is doing with VoIP, but isn't sure about where its strategy fits with that of its parent company.
"To be honest, we're really confused about their strategy to address the market. We've been working with Cisco on small business VoIP, and with Linksys, but it's still not clear to me what the delineation is between the two product families," Duffy said.