What do Portugal, broadband and small businesses have in common?
You likely read about our small business networking announcement yesterday. We unveiled a global initiative and a $100 million investment focused on those businesses that typically fall under the radar of most ’big’ IT companies: the sub-100 employee category.
We made the announcement at Channel Exchange here in Lisbon, Portugal, a country whose economy has been fueled in recent years by exceptionally high levels of broadband deployment and Internet adoption . The venue seems appropriate given our belief that the second phase of the Internet has much to offer small businesses too.
Before we left for Lisbon, I cornered Ian Pennell, SVP of our newly-created Small Business Technology Group, and Andrew Sage, the VP who oversees our new small business sales strategy, and asked them a few questions about our new small business initiative.
I asked Ian to sum up the key points of our announcement and to answer:
• Why aren’t more small business adopting networking technology today?
• How are the technology needs of small businesses different to large enterprises?
• How will the current economic environment affect this strategy?
I asked Andrew:
• Why are channel partners important to Cisco’s small business strategy?
• Why is Cisco’s small business strategy good news for channel partners?
• How does being able to buy from a retailer or a channel partner benefit small businesses?
Finally, in this third video, we see a reaction to our news from a member of the community we care about most: our partners. Ben Donaldson of the Kytec Group in Australia tells us what he thought of Day One of Channel Exchange.
Posted by David McCulloch at 02:26AM PST
Michael Bailey Nov 7, 2008
Thanks for the videos - is anyone from Cisco using Twitter? If so, what’s their @ names?