Cisco Primes Linksys For Small-Business Channel

D-Link last week inked a distribution deal that will bring its xStack product line to enterprise-focused partners through Westcon Group and its various divisions, including Comstor, which has primarily focused on selling Cisco gear.

"They're really interested in offering an alternative," said Keith Karlsen, executive vice president of D-Link, Fountain Valley, Calif.

Another challenge Cisco faces is one of perception, as many partners view Linksys strictly as a consumer play.

"There's no particular reason we're not working with Linksys. They're probably just not on the radar for us," said Pat Grillo, president of Atrion Communications Resources, a solution provider in Branchburg, N.J., that carries networking products from Cisco and Extreme Networks. "I look at them when I need to set up remote access from my home," Grillo said.

Customers themselves have a similar perception, said Reza Zarafshar, president and CEO of Advanced Computer Concepts, a solution provider in McLean, Va. ACC counts Cisco as the networking vendor it does the most business with but also carries HP's ProCurve gear and signed on with Netgear three months ago.

"We're not against Linksys, but the impression the market has about Linksys is that they're more of a SOHO provider than for business," Zarafshar said. "They have plenty of products that fit well in the SMB space, but they're not seen that way."

ACC looked at the Linksys portfolio but found an opportunity for a closer partnership with Netgear. "Netgear seemed to demonstrate a lot of interest in working with the channel and doing out-of-the-box thinking to create opportunities for us," Zarafshar said.

Other solution providers said they want to see more clarity from Cisco on how it's positioning Linksys.

"I think Cisco's pretty confused about Linksys," said one Cisco partner in a recent interview who asked not to be identified.

While Linksys is trying to promote its own business-class portfolio, Cisco executives and field-sales reps are steering Cisco partners away from the product line, the partner said. "If you're aligned with the [Cisco] field, you had better not sell Linksys because they're not compensated on it," the partner said.

Cisco is re-evaluating its compensation strategy to consider whether sales reps should be eligible for compensation on Linksys business, said Williams.

Further confusion could also be cleared after Cisco decides how much longer the Linksys moniker will even survive.

"We've announced that we are going to migrate all branding toward Cisco, but each of the different [geographic] areas has a different consideration for how fast that will happen," Giancarlo said.

While the Linksys brand is expected to disappear on the consumer side, there is still a chance it will endure for small-business products, he said.

With the investments Linksys has made in products and personnel, it is primed for the fight, Williams said. "We're ready to go after this market with a vengeance."