Cisco Systems Inc., the undisputed king of the enterprise networking market, is setting its sights on a smaller fry with the launch of an SMB initiative this week.
Cisco"s SMB effort will include all-in-one product bundles, simplified setup applications, financing, training and a US$2 billion commitment to the SMB market.
"This is to some degree a repeat of the Cisco story in the enterprise, but delivered in an SMB size and scale of complexity," said Peter Alexander, vice-president of worldwide commercial marketing for Cisco.
Targeting the SMB market makes sense for Cisco, said Dan McLean, an analyst with IDC Canada Ltd. in Toronto.
"It"s the one segment of the market they don"t already own," he noted. "They"ve got their fingers everywhere else."
Cisco"s largest hurdle in penetrating the SMB market is the complexity of its products, McLean said.
"I"ve heard companies say they"d love to use Cisco, but that it"s too complicated," he said. "There"s a big chunk of the market that wants to just plug a networking product in and have all the configuration done and the features ready to go."