Cisco's $100M SMB investment

Cisco Systems announced Thursday that it plans to make a serious play for the small business market for routers and call center support. A day after its warning of lagging sales, Cisco announced it would make a $100 million global investment in serving companies with 100 or fewer employees. The company said it planned to help these businesses increase mobility and exposure through the internet, video, and unified communications solutions.

Cisco also announced it would form the Cisco Small Business Technology Group, which will research six areas in which the company says small businesses are increasingly focused: connectivity, security, remote access, productivity, customer interaction and customer support.

Cisco thinks the market for small business networking and communication was around $10 billion. The company will launch its first products developed exclusively for the small business in December.

"The No. 1 priority for small-business owners is growing their companies, not becoming technology experts," Rick Moran, vice president of small business solutions marketing for Cisco, said in a statement. "Small businesses learn about and implement technology in very different ways than do large enterprises. In recognition, Cisco has transformed the way we communicate with small-business customers with a customized SMB-specific Website and marketing campaigns that focus increasingly on business capabilities and benefits of complete solutions rather than on products and technologies."

Cisco will also create dedicated small business support call centers to support the products and their users.

For more:
- see the Cisco release here 

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