Cisco Swallows Up Linksys Partner Program

With the creation of SBTG, Cisco is bringing the Linksys small-business engineering team into the Cisco fold. Under Pennell, one of Cisco's "engineering rock stars," SBTG will develop products specifically for the small business space, Sage said.

In addition, Cisco has created Sage's role as the global lead for small business sales, a position that reports up to channel chief Goodwin. "It seems natural, but when you think about it, it's actually kind of a big deal because we don't have any of the direct sales number responsibility rolling up into the channel anywhere but small business," Sage said.

Cisco in April, 2007, first disclosed plans to build a single, integrated partner community between itself and the business-focused side of its Linksys division. Now, after focus groups, surveys of Cisco Select and Linksys partner and a year-long pilot program, those plans have come to fruition, Sage said.

"To be honest it took us awhile to execute on the strategy but we think what we've come up with now is pretty impactful," Sage said.

The end result is that Linksys's 20,000 small-business channel partners now have until September 16 to sign up to become Cisco Registered partners, already 40,000 solution providers strong. Allowing for overlap, Cisco expects to have 50,000 Registered partners at the end of the integration process. Add to that the existing 8,000 certified partners that make up its Cisco Select ranks and that brings the vendor to approximately 58,000 solution providers focused on small and mid-sized businesses.

Linksys partners that become Cisco Registered partners will have access to the vendor's small-business portfolio as well as demo equipment, pre-sales support, marketing tools and the rest of Cisco's partner enablement offerings, Sage said. Instead of the contractually-based five-percent discount previously given to Linksys Partner Connection members, those partners will receive ongoing price promotions through distribution, Sage said.

Meanwhile, Cisco partners will have the option of adding Linksys small business products to their lineups.

Cisco is also inviting Linksys-focused distributors to join the Cisco distribution ranks. In the U.S., Cisco's distribution partners D&H Distributing, Ingram Micro, Tech Data and Westcon Group's Comstor division, will be joined by ASI, a Linksys distributor in Fremont, Calif., which will now add the Cisco small business portfolio to its linecard.

The Linksys business-class products will continue to carry the Linksys By Cisco brand and coexist with Cisco-branded small business offerings, Sage said, though he noted that Cisco will continue to evaluate that branding strategy going forward.