SMBs favour primary networking vendors

BANGALORE: A recent study by Frost & Sullivan found that small and medium businesses (SMBs) in Asia Pacific are moving away from multi-vendor networking solutions to primary-vendor suites. The main drivers for this trend are considerations for consolidation, convenience and cost, at a time when growing network complexity is posing a challenge in terms of management, integration and cost. The study, commissioned by Cisco Systems®, surveyed over 100 SMBs in Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, India, and Singapore.

"Network complexity is no longer an issue for just the large enterprises, but also a growing concern for small and medium businesses (SMBs)," said Manoj Menon, partner, Frost & Sullivan. "SMBs are today forging ahead in the adoption of newer networking technologies, having realized the business benefits behind new generation networks that offer converged data, voice and multimedia," he added.

One example of a primary-vendor solution is from Cisco®, which delivers advanced networking technology, expert local support, scalable solutions suites and lower total cost of ownership (TCO) to SMBs in Asia Pacific. Cisco offers SMB customers simplicity, integration, control, performance and cost advantages by its ability to integrate voice, data and video over a single device, the Cisco integrated services router (ISR). The ISR also fits into Cisco's concept of self-defending networks, with its embedded security applications.

Frost & Sullivan's analysis on the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a suite of 4 solutions (IP Telephony, Switching, Routing and Network Security) from Cisco versus best-of-breed products reveals compelling benefits for SMBs:

* Overall cost savings of 49% over a period of 3 years;

* 0% hidden costs compared to 19% hidden costs in best-of-breed solutions;

* Savings across all the TCO components, with the exception of upfront costs.

"The ISR forms the core of Cisco's initiative to address the needs of SMB customers. Apart from offering the unique values of end-to-end integration across a network, cost benefits and ease of managing, the ISR is a fantastic product and the first networking platform in the industry to provide customers with an infrastructure that enables fast, highly secure access to today's mission-critical business applications with optimized security and integrated voice, while establishing a foundation for tomorrow's intelligent networks," said Christian Hentschel, Director, Advanced Technology Sales, Asia Pacific, Cisco Systems.

By embedding and integrating security, voice, and video services inside the router, customers gain modularity and adaptability. Because these services are built right into the router's motherboard, the router's "real estate" is increased by freeing up the network modules and interface cards that were formerly used for those services. The ISR provides up to five times the service density, seven times the performance, and four times the memory over the previous generation of products to ensure that customers will have the networking capacity and capabilities they need as their businesses grow.

"The Frost & Sullivan study also highlights the growing importance of networking technologies in increasing organizational efficiency. With Cisco's solution, SMB customers get the full benefits of such an integrated technology at very affordable costs with significant actual and future savings on deployment, service and upgrades." added Hentschel.