The Cisco Advantage Now Road show is designed to help our partners across the country to build a stronger small and medium business (SMB) practice. SMBs are a key focus area for Cisco and Advantage Now reaffirms our commitment to this market. This program will enable our partners to provide a structured, prioritized evolution path for small and medium sized businesses, which can address the business challenges of today while maximizing the future potential of their technology investments.

Year on year, what kind of growth are you seeing in this programme as it has touched 1000 partners and 10 cities now?

Advantage Now was first organized in 2010 and we had participation from 488 partners. Since then, we have had four editions and seen tremendous response from our channel partners. This year, we are reaching out to approximately 1000 partners across 10 cities. We transitioned to a partner-led business model last year and since then we have significantly increased our channel efforts to augment partner capabilities and arm with the right products and know-how to better serve this fast-growing segment.

What all activities are you expecting to happen in the programme?

Advantage Now! will feature a series of informative meets to share with partners about the latest initiatives, products, programs, insights and promotions from Cisco, to help them better serve SMB customers across the country. We will also introduce our current quarterly promotion 'Race to Rio' to our partners, which offers exciting rewards including an all expense paid trip to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to witness the Rio Carnival LIVE! In addition, we will be showcasing latest collaboration, security and connectivity solutions and products specifically designed for SMBs.

Which cities are you covering this time and why these cities, and why 10 cities only?

We strongly believe that tier II cities will drive Cisco India’s growth story, hence strengthening our market position in such high-growth markets is an integral part of our strategy to achieve the targeted growth. Today, Cisco is a fully partner driven organization and with over 1200 network of partners, we are well represented throughout the country.

The current edition of Advantage Now will cover 9 cities in India - Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Lucknow, Aurangabad, Goa, Vishakhapatnam, Trivandrum, Bhubaneswar and one in Bangladesh – Dacca. However, this is a bi-annual road show and we plan to reach out to more cities and partners in future.

What all products are you demonstrating?

We will use this unique platform to connect with partners and communicate updates from our solutions across UCS C- Series, Unified Communications & WebEx portfolio. Given the many types of SMBs and their varying stages of technology awareness and adoption, Cisco is working with partners to create bundles with a focused technology direction that can be effectively targeted at the most receptive customer prospects. Advantage Now! will educate channel partners on these technology directions and help them effectively tap into the business needs of small and medium businesses.

What benefits partners will derive from this programme? Since is it focused on the SMEs, what kind of pain points you wish to address?

Businesses today have become very dynamic in their approach to communication and are adopting new and different ways to interact with their customers so that they can serve them better and build stronger relationships. Partners that create solid foundations for small business networks - that effectively integrate people, processes and information - are reaping higher returns on investments and developing better long term relationships with their end customers.

To this end, this programme will help our partners lead the conversation with their end customers and help build a stronger practice by providing them with information they need about new and enhanced Cisco solutions for SMBs. Furthermore, this programme will also help our partners discover SMB solutions that will help them be more profitable in the here and now while enabling their end customers meet the challenge of tomorrow.

Are you also focusing on small enterprises also?

Yes, we have a strong focus on both SMBs and SMEs. In fact, they are one of the fastest growing vertical for us. At Cisco, classification of an organization into a small and medium business is done on the basis of the number of desktops the company and not on the basis of the number of workers employed. A small business is one that has between 1 and 99 computers, and businesses with 100 and 200 personal computers is classified as the SMB market. The mid-market sector is between 201 and 999 PCs.

What kind of contribution and growth are you expecting from SME segment in coming years?

While a significant number of SMEs are still at a basic technology adoption level, others are moving to more mature levels. There has been a clear change in the attitude of small businesses who now view IT investment as a strategic decision enabling them to fulfill their business needs. More so, when they are looking at adopting technologies that will help them scale their business and give them a competitive edge, especially in a global arena. This segment represents a huge opportunity for us and comprises a significant portion of Cisco’s customer base.