Cisco Continues SMB Onslaught With New Services, Gear

Cisco also added new services, including the Cisco Small Business Pro Service, which gives SMBs three years of technical support and coverage for Small Business Pro solutions and offers next-day hardware replacement and extended support center access. Cisco also offers community-based support via the online Cisco Small Business Support Community, a virtual community that lets partners and customers share knowledge and expertise about small business technologies and issues.

Cisco has also boosted the rebates for Select certified partners that participate in the global Partner Development Funds (PDF) program, offering up to $15,000 until July 25. At the same time, Cisco unveiled the new Small Business Performance Accelerator, a rebate program for registered partners selling into SMBs. Partners can also now leverage extended channel financing terms of 90 days for the next six months.

"We're going to be very focused on making support a major component of the SMB," Sage said, adding that Cisco is launching a Small Business Support Center to offer presales and postsales support.

Sage added that enabling partners to build lasting relationships with small business customers is at the heart of the new product and service launches.

"Being a trusted adviser to small business is what it's really about, he said. Sage noted that Cisco is refreshing its SMB training for partners through new SMB University specializations and certifications. Cisco is also putting $1 million into demo equipment and not-for-resale programs for partners, so they can "make sure customers know they're in this business."

Other new offers include live leads via Cisco.com, a new Buy Now button on Cisco.com for selected SMB products that routes the sales through online partners and new smart designs for small business, which are essentially blueprints of SMB deployments that can be replicated to cut down the sales cycle.

In addition, Cisco is offering customers incentives as they move to Cisco's small business offerings. Cisco is providing migration strategies from Linksys gear, discounts of 5 percent to 7 percent and price reductions that let customers save up to 25 percent on the SBCS system.

Partners said Cisco's strong focus on the SMB space will make it easier to engage customers.

"It's going to make it easier for us to sell the products," said Robert Betzel, president and CEO of Macon, Ga.-based Infinity Network Solutions.

Betzel added that having more offerings directly aimed at the SMB, as opposed to whittling down enterprise-focused solutions to fit in smaller environments, will create benefits.

"A small business isn't going to buy something like the enterprise will just for fun," he said.