SMBs to Become a $25B Market by 2016, Cisco Says and Strategizes

Gordon Mackintosh, director of SMB Sales at Cisco, said that by 2016, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are projected to grow into a $25 billion market. In Mackintosh’s corporate blog post, he reveals Cisco’s plans to continue to become a player in the SMB arena and to further the enablement of its partners to meet the demands of the forecasted $25 billion SMB market. He also specifies the factors – which include BYOD trends, cloud computing, and mobility – that drive the spending of SMBs.

In Mackintosh’s telegraph dispatches to Channelnomics, he comments, “They’re starting to value the network as more strategic than ever before and are looking to the network as a key asset for productivity sales growth through reaching new customers as well as attracting the best people in the industry. SMB customers will become some of the fastest adopters of cloud and BYOD, two of the big mega trends in our industry today, all of this offers just a phenomenal opportunity for Cisco and its partners.”

Cisco’s Gordon Mackintosh also said that, when it comes to addressing the needs of SMB-specific solution providers, Cisco is not the most straightforward choice as a vendor. Thus, the company is reviewing its channel-related affairs, resources, and practices in order to find out what needs to be done to expand its SMB-oriented opportunities. Mackintosh, however, did not elaborate on Cisco’s touted SMB plans. He said that information about them is slated to come out during the forthcoming months.

It is worth noting that, in June, Cisco will hold its yearly partner conference in Boston. Channelnomics’ Larry Walsh opines that it is possible that the company’s SMB plans will be unveiled as part of its major channel announcements.

Also noteworthy is Cisco’s move toward servicing enterprise needs for cloud computing, network switches and solutions, unified communications, and virtual data centers, while not giving up entirely on the SMB market. The past years for Cisco Systems, Inc. have been marked by the dropping off of its non-core products. The company killed off the Flip video camera, stopped the production and sale of Cius tablet, and put an end to its Umi video conferencing system. Then there’s the January 2013 sale of Cisco’s Home Networking Business Unit and Linksys business to Belkin, which is generally viewed by analysts as the refocusing of Cisco toward enterprise-grade products only. Channelnomics’ Larry Walsh remarked that, “Conveniently overlooked is Linksys is as much of a SMB brand of products as it was consumer.” (KOM) Link. Link.