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Telecommunications Cisco/Linksys takes new approach to SME market
Telecommunications Cisco/Linksys takes new approach to SME market | Cisco/Linksys takes new approach to SME market |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Monday, 14 November 2005 | |
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The offering, Linksys One, is billed as "an easy affordable communications solution that addresses all the needs of small business...a purpose built complete hosted communications solution for voice video and data that operates and functions as a complete system." Functionally it has two key differentiators. All call processing is carried out by the individual SIP based IP phones: there is no PABX functionality in either customer premises unit or hosted in the service provider's network on a softswitch. Secondly the system is designed to auto configure new devices as they are added based the initial configuration set into the service router. Linksys One comprises a Cisco service node - carrier grade Cisco equipment that sits in the service provider's network - a services router on the customer's premises and individual end points, primarily IP phones, gateways for analogue phones or faxes and security surveillance cameras. Cisco subsidiary, Linksys has the prime role of taking the product to market and held a global webcast briefing on Linksys One last week, embargoed until 14 November. However Linksys One represents a key "Advanced Technology" focus for parent company Cisco Systems. Speaking at that briefing, Martin De Beer, vice president and general manager, Linksys small business systems business unit, said: "Linksys One will be Cisco's next big advanced technology area and will be classified as hosted SBS... The focus of Linksys One is really around fast plug and play, ease of use and installation and this is one reason we have decided to market it under the Linksys model. Linksys has the capability for volume low cost manufacturing." As the product ramps up Cisco is eyeing a massive global market. De Beer said: "There are about 35 million small business of less than 100 employees around the world of which about half have between 5-100 employees. That is the area that Linksys One will focus on...[All businesses of less than 100 employees] spend about $US12 billion per year in the categories that Linksys One will be addressing. These include routing, switching and telecom gear as well as storage and wireless." He said that a key challenge faced this market, and it was one that suppliers were struggling to address. "They are very diverse in their behaviour and their needs. Many are very challenged in that they struggle to focus on their core business because of the technology problems the face. The either have to buy different types of technology from different places and try to integrate it themselves, or they are forced to pay someone to come in and do that for them. And they are challenged to deal with multiple providers of services: voice data and applications. Simplification is really needed for this market. We believe it has been very underserved and that there is great potential here." The anchor of the solution is the services router that includes both lan switching routing and firewall capability. Without a central server functions such as voicemail, autoattendent, IVR and night service will be supported on each phone. Enabling this functionality back in the network will be a service node, "a rack of carrier class Cisco equipment that provides he automated provisioning deployment and configuration of the Linksys equipment on the customer premises." This configuration also enables the service provider to offer configuration backup. According to De Beer, "All the configurations and data from the system is backed up by the service provider in the service node so that if any device should fail it can be replaced in a plug and play fashion. And if you have to relocate [the entire business] devices can be brought up with the same phone numbers in a matter of days." The service provider is responsible for the end-to-end provisioning of the service and is expected to own all the CPE. However the key channel to market is expected to be value added resellers who will sell, install and configure the systems and be paid a commission based on the total contract value. Trials of the service started in the US in August and trials are presently underway there with several service providers. "We plan to have restricted availability in mid December in the US and to be in trials with multiple service providers by January, De Beer said. "By March and April we aim to have nationwide availability in the US. We will be going to trials in Europe next year with SPs by late [northern] spring. In parallel we will start trialling service in Asia and the rest of the world in late summer."
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