Comztek and Cisco held a joint gathering in Johannesburg this week to introduce their small and medium enterprise (SME) products to their reseller market.
The SME market in SA is proving to be the main growth area for the IT industry, particularly in the area of networking and connectivity, says Roy Blume of BMI-TechKnowledge, who presented an overview of the SME market in SA, and where the opportunities for the channel exist.
"Cisco has traditionally been viewed as mainly an enterprise player and many resellers are unaware that the brand also offers technology designed to deliver value in the SME space," says networking business unit director at Comztek, Uwe Brandkamp.
"The Comztek, Cisco SMB Focus Day provided an important forum for the launch of a number of new Cisco products aimed specifically at SME users, including the Catalyst 2960 Intelligent Ethernet switches and Catalyst 500 Express layer 2-managed Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet switches," says territory market manager at Cisco, Jessica Robinson.
These products are aimed at the SME because they are easy to use, configure and manage and have a security thread running through all products - a number one priority for Cisco, she says.
There are over 150 000 SME companies in SA and Cisco has experienced a 200% growth within this sector the past two years and is still growing, said Robinson in her presentation.
Convergence plans
The upcoming deregulation by government and access to broadband will enable affordable access technology and enable SMEs to behave competitively with big organisations, says Steve Midgley, director of operations, commercial business at Cisco Systems SA.
Cisco`s three to five year vision to achieve convergence beyond voice and data has begun, he says.
Channel incentives
Cisco also used the event to introduce its SMB Select Partner Programme, designed to help channel partners deliver better Cisco-based SME solutions.
Robinson outlined the programme`s structure and its combination of incentives such as rebates, training and special promotions which enable qualifying channel partners to better grow their SME operations.
In the global 2005 annual report to shareholders, for the fiscal year July 2005, Cisco`s president and CEO John T Chambers said that six advanced technologies showed the highest revenue growth of Cisco`s product groups.
They were: enterprise IP communications, home networking, optical networking, security, storage area networking and wireless technology. In 2005, the integrated services router, an enterprise solution for branch offices, was introduced.
The integrated services router is designed to allow customers to customise solutions by adding security, voice and wireless capabilities to a single routing platform. Cisco`s switching products continue to maintain a number-one market share position, they said.
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