So Cisco has gotten tired of being thought of as a big business solution only. They bought Linksys a few years ago, and now have come up with Cisco Small Business.
It is an interesting prospect. The have taken the Linksys business line, some of their Cisco brand offerings, and some new products, given them special SKUs, and wrapped them up in a nice package along with a special small business support line. Yep, most of the SMB offerings no longer will get smartnet, but will have the SMB Support, which is supposed to be people who understand integration and troubleshooting in a small business environment. Sounds like a nice neat series of products.
The offerings are nice, but as usual there is a small catch. To get the best deals there are 2 tests to pass to become a Cisco Select Partner, one step up from the Registered Partner. The problem is finding study material easily for these 2 tests. Don’t worry, they are only $65 per test and you can have one person take one test and someone else take the other.
Being a Select Partner seems to be where the value really shines. That amount of access you get to Cisco increases, the kickbacks become worth while, and you can sell their Unified Communication System, which integrates most anything you could want.
The products themselves are typical Cisco, and while some are real good values, most seem to be upper level stuff with some of the functionality stripped out.
Still, it is nice to see Cisco realizing that they have missed a huge market out there on price points.