Parlez--vous SMB? Fala-se Midmarket?

Already realizing impressive, double-digit growth in SMB sales here at home, the small and midsize partner programs at most major vendors are taking on a distinctly international flair. And rightfully so, as research indicates a maturing of European midmarket channels that have professional services, support and business savvy in high demand.

The worldwide expansion of Cisco Systems' SMB Select Partner Program was on display at the vendor's European Channel and SMB Press Forum in Milan, Italy, late last month. Cisco execs used the continental shindig to announce that the SMB partner rolls in Europe had grown to more than 2,300 members.

Those partners are enjoying a growing list of services, much like their U.S. counterparts. At the same event, Cisco unveiled Euro versions of its Unified Communications Accelerator Program and the Cisco SMB University in 21 countries, aimed at bolstering the list of partners focused on security, wireless and voice solutions for businesses with 20 to 1,000 employees.

Keith Humphries, managing consultant at EuroLAN, an analyst firm in London, says Cisco's SMB push in Europe is succeeding for many of the same reasons the vendor's 2-year-old domestic SMB push has done well. Cisco is helping partners move beyond transactional technology sales and into broader solutions. With SMB Select, he says, partners evolve into "trusted advisers relieving [users] of their pain points."

Microsoft struck a similar refrain at the Convergence 2006 EMEA conference last month, when the software giant rolled out new tools, services and role-based solutions for partners looking to deploy and manage IT infrastructures for midsize businesses. According to Microsoft's research, 384,000 of the world's 1.4 million midsize businesses are in Europe, and that group is increasingly facing the same challenges--globalization and compliance, for example--as their enterprise counterparts.

Davide Vigano, who runs worldwide Small and Midmarket Solutions and Partners at Microsoft, says the midmarket may have the same IT needs as big business, "but [they're] challenged with unique resource constraints that could be better addressed by the IT industry." Microsoft's vision, he adds, is "delivering the right tools to partners to better serve midsize businesses."

Microsoft's findings are similar to those of Cisco, whose recent survey of SMB Select partners in Europe found that a majority of solution providers now feel quality support services and a strong knowledge of a customer's business are the two main factors in ensuring SMB customer loyalty. That's music to the ears of Andreas Dohmen, Cisco's vice president of European channels. He vowed that the SMB Select program would continue to expand in parallel with growth in "demand for wireless, security and especially voice solutions."

IBM, too, is pushing evolution in its European partner programs. Big Blue in November said it was opening a new IBM Innovation Center in Barcelona to serve burgeoning IT channel sales in Spain and Portugal. The center provides tech support, testing and optimization mainly for ISVs looking to develop new open-platform apps and services. IBM says it has been working with more than 1,100 software vendors in Spain, a country with the fastest-growing IT market in Europe, according to the European Information Technology Observatory.

The increased access to technical expertise and other resources should "encourage a greater pool of developers and start-up companies to build applications on open technologies," says Buell Duncan, general manager of ISV and developer relations at IBM. "Barcelona is considered to be an active hub of development in Spain, and it's always exciting to tap into a new source of ideas, creativity and innovation."