Cisco to appoint 700 partners in the West

MUMBAI: In line with its strategy to tap into the growing opportunities in the commercial and SMB segments, Cisco India will be appointing more than 700 reseller partners in the West. The vendor has around 300 partners in the West alone. Cisco also intends to appoint partners in other parts of the country.

In addition to this, the company will also be training partners across the country on the implementation of its products. The vendor has scaled its training program and now it will be conducted for over a week. The program will be available at partner's convenience and will provide information and support to partners across various technology portals that have been set up by the vendor.

Patrick Mathias, VP-Sales (West) Cisco, India and SAARC, said, “Partners will be hired on the basis of industry verticals. Currently five percent of our business comes from the SMB segment and we are looking at doubling the figure in another two years time. In order to tap into growing opportunities in the SMB segment, we have also rolled out the NOW (Network On Wheels) van. Cisco has invested around Rs 2 crore in networking equipments that this mobile van will be carrying.”

In the first phase of NOW, the vendor covered as many as eight states. The company is now planning to cover another 50 cities in the next eight months. Cisco has also collaborated with Mumbai-based Trade Association of Information Technology (TAIT) and will showcase the van during COM IT, the annual trade show held by the association. Partners across the country can also access the van by booking it in advance for their SMB's customers. “In the first phase of the NOW van, Cisco had registered 50 percent adoption rate amongst the SMB customers. 20 percent of these SMB customers had gone ahead to purchase wireless routers offered by Cisco. This concept has helped us to create awareness amongst the SMB customers around the products and solutions offered by us,” added Mathias.

Apart from India, US and China are the other two countries where the concept of NOW van has been rolled out by Cisco. The van is a mobile showcase of Cisco's networking solutions comprising unified communications applications, cost effective networking solutions and Cisco business communication solutions among others.