Cisco's Linksys brand may disappear sooner than expected, according to a top executive for small business at the company.
The company sells networking gear for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) under both the Cisco and Linksys brands, which has created some confusion, vice president of SMB Solutions Marketing Rick Moran acknowledged on Monday. Linksys was a successful vendor of home and SMB networking gear that Cisco acquired in 2003. There are routers, wireless LANs and other products under both brands that are aimed at small businesses.
Chairman and CEO John Chambers said last year at an event in Europe, captured in a YouTube video, that Linksys would disappear under the Cisco brand over time. Linksys followed up by saying its brand wasn't going anywhere in the near term.
Cisco had already moved to allow its SMB channel partners to sell both Cisco and Linksys products, starting about a year ago, but in the process found out most of them didn't want to carry both, Moran said. Those that sold Cisco gear weren't interested in selling the simpler Linksys products because they wanted to sell their customers system integration services, and Linksys resellers were more geared toward selling individual products, he said.
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