End user experience Category Archives

September 26, 2007

What's an SMB?

I love Wikipedia. I just do – it just speaks to me. So of course I had to check out the Wikipedia definition of SMB. Lot’s of interesting possibilities including Small Mouth Bass, Steve Miller Band, Server Message Block protocol. Plus some of which are just way too inappropriate to mention. Here’s a liberally paraphrased version of the Wikipedia definition I was after:

“Small and medium enterprises or SMEs are companies whose headcount or turnover (revenue) falls below certain limits. The EU categorizes companies with fewer than 50 employees as "small", and those with fewer than 250 as "medium". In the US, SMB often refers to companies with less than 100 employees, while medium-sized business often refers to those with less than 500 employees.”

Cisco defines SMB pretty much along the lines of the EU definition. These definitions are fairly meaningless because they imply that SMBs are just small enterprises. But thinking in terms of mobility, small and medium size companies are different than enterprises in 3 key ways:

1) Applications that drive their wireless deployments and upgrades aren’t voice, guest, or location tracking. They are more basic such as moving from paper to electronic systems (e.g. electronic medical records), upgrading accounting systems, and addressing regulatory compliance. Or deployments are event driven such as moving to a new location or addressing security holes.

2) They speak a different language then enterprise. SMB owners and business managers rely on a range of “experts” for IT decisions because they typically have little or no IT staff. IT staff that exists are generalists, not networking or wireless experts. Trusted advisors may include business peers, vendors (think Dell), on-line retailers such as CDW, accountants, consultants, and brothers-in-law.

3) SMBs don’t really know how Cisco can help their business. To most SMBs and their VARs, Cisco is too big, too complex, and too expensive. Try navigating Cisco.com and compare the experience to hp.com. This is our opportunity and this is what we need address.

I have to admit that all of this is pretty much a U.S. centric point of view and needs more thinking for different markets. In many countries, a 250 or even 100 person company is a big business. And even though we like to segment the market by company size, how many SMBs actually view themselves as one? They would most likely describe their business as (for example) a manufacturer, retailer, medical clinic, hotel, legal office - and we should too.

Posted by Georganne Benesch at 06:42 PM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

February 27, 2007

Matt's Wireless Experience yesterday - no wires attached

Yesterday I woke up right on time (again) because my clock wirelessly synchronizes to a master clock. As part of my morning routine. I grabbed my remote control and flipped on the stereo to my favorite news station.

While I was trying to open my eyes, my mother called to talk about the Oscars. So I grabbed my 2.4 Ghz phone and listened to why she thought "Little Miss Sunshine" should have won and how cute the little girl was sitting in her chair. Yada yada yada...

I want to go back to sleep 5:30 AM is a bit too early to hear how pleased she was that Martin Scorcese finally won.

"Mom can I call you later?" I hung up - threw the phone on the nightstand (knowing I'll forget where it is but knowing I can use the base station to find it later on).

The truth is - its at these early morning moments when I regret not investing in one of those wireless thing-a-majigs that turn your hot water on for you.

But I'm inherently cheap - so I pulled myself out of bed, turned on the water, and waited for it to get warm.

After the shower I threw my clothes on, piled into the car, and turned on a little Howard Stern 100 on Sirius, er XM, er SiriusX, or whatever they are called this week. I'd like to tell you that I find him offensive (ok sometimes he is a bit too much)... I'm not an elitist - the guy makes me laugh.

I suffer from a little adult A.D.D. so even though I was enjoying the show. I fired up the old bluetooth headset and made a few calls. First was to my mom to apologize for my incoherence. She said (in her thick NY accent) that it was "O.K. Matthew - I shouldn't have called so early."

Next it was checking in with some sales guys. Then I arrived at work.

I fixed my passive RFID badge to my belt, flashed it in front of the reader, the door clicked, and suddenly I was inside of Building 14 of Cisco Systems - home to the famous Wireless Networking Business Unit.

I rarely (if ever) plug in my PC into a wired port, I just let it boot up and authenticate.

BOOM (to use a John Madden term) I'm on the network.
BAM I'm roaming into a conference room
BING I'm firing up my IP Communicator on my laptop to make a phone call
BAM I'm roaming again
ZAM I'm doing instant messenger with an engineer
KA-POW I realized I'm in deep trouble cause I'm supposed to take my girlfriend out but I haven't made a reservation (Is John Chambers reading this? If so I was actually working the whole time and I'm making a joke ;-) ).

During lunch I had to run to my bank. While waiting in line to talk to a teller I decided to do a couple of other financial transactions so I whipped out my PDA and checked on my brokerage account. I also looked up reservations on Opentable.com, which is the ultimate tool for bachelors in need of a dinner reservation.

I went back to work (making a few more calls along the way - if you see a guy in a burgandy 1989 Toyota pickup truck swerving all over the road cause he is talking on the phone - chances are it is Alan Cohen who is borrowing mine - I never drive that way).

I went home at my usual time. I went for a long run. To pace myself I use a wireless transmitter in my show that syncs up to my IPOD. The transmitter synchonizes my pace to the music playing on my IPOD. The result is the optimal pace for me. Of course at the same time my Polar Heart rate monitor was letting me keep my heart rate in the optimal zone.

Finally, after the run, I went to dinner, came home, flipped on the satelite TV and fell asleep on the coach.

No wires attached!

Posted by Matt Glenn at 08:02 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

October 13, 2006

A wireless shopping experience

Wireless LAN, RFID, 802.11, Wi-Fi all these words ring a bell but you still have a hard time figuring out how this will impact your daily life and what is so exceptional about Mobility. This video should help you understand how your shopping experience can be transformed...

If you cannot see the video in the screen below, click on the following link http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2760900956201083818&hl=en

Posted by Isabelle Guis at 07:00 AM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)