NEWS RELEASE: Cisco Announces Unified Communications Platforms for Small and Mid-sized Businesses and New Sales Productivity Initiatives
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Cisco Announces Unified Communications Platforms for Small and
Mid-sized Businesses and New Sales Productivity Initiatives
New sales support for smaller VARs provides immediate, personalized
sales support for smaller Cisco partners
NEW ORLEANS - Cisco Partner Summit - March 2, 2011 - Cisco today
announced two new purpose-built unified communications solutions for
small and mid-sized businesses. These new Cisco® Unified Communications
offerings provide customers in these distinct market segments with
complete, affordable, business-class collaboration systems to help drive
productivity and profitability.
Cisco also announced a new global sales productivity initiative called
Cisco Partner Advisor, with agents available to give Select and
Registered partners immediate and personalized sales support to
accelerate sales and make it easier to do business with Cisco. In
addition, Cisco is providing channel partners with more ways to offer
complete collaboration solutions for small and mid-sized customers by
extending Cisco WebEx® Meeting Center to its partners.
Announcement Highlights
* New Unified Communications System for Small Business - The Cisco
Unified Communications 300 Series is a complete collaboration system
delivering everything a company with two to 24 users needs for
business-class networking and voice communications. This easy-to-use,
affordable solution lets a small business take advantage of IP telephony
to reduce phone costs, boost employee productivity, and create a more
collaborative company. It includes built-in data and wireless support,
along with features such as voicemail and automated attendant.
Three-year, zero percent financing is available from Cisco Capital® in
the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom for the Cisco UC300
Series through the end of July, 2011.
* New Unified Communications System for Mid-Sized Businesses - The
Cisco Unified Communications Manager Business Edition 3000 is an
economical unified communications platform designed for growing
mid-sized businesses, and supports a capacity of 300 users across 10
sites. The system is quick for a trained Cisco partner to set up, and
easy-to-use, with an intuitive user interface, helping these customers
to save time and money, and helping our channel partners to optimize
their implementation, support, and maintenance practices.
The Cisco Unified CM Business Edition 3000 offers essential features
like voice mail, conferencing, the ability to park or hold calls, auto
attendant, and standard mobility features like single number reach,
extension mobility, and tele-worker support to connect business calls
and voice mail messages to employees anywhere they choose to work. The
Cisco Unified SIP Phone 3905 is an affordable, IP-based phone that
integrates with the Cisco Unified CM Business Edition 3000 to address
the need for uncomplicated voice communications for mid-sized
businesses. It included fixed keys for redial, transfer, hold and
resume, speakerphone, volume toggle, and a PC switch port to reduce
cabling installation requirements.
* New Partner Sales Support Initiative - Cisco Partner Advisor is an
innovative sales coverage and support initiative for Cisco small
business and mid-market partners that provides immediate, personalized
sales support via click-to-chat or phone. Initially delivered through
two global centers in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Lisbon, Portugal,
Cisco support personnel are waiting to help new partners get started
with Cisco and provide assistance to partners for deal support, programs
and tools. Over the next few months, Partner Advisor will continue to
roll out in Europe, Emerging Markets, Asia Pacific and Canada, and
support will be available in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
and Korean. With this sophisticated sales support offering, Cisco is
investing in people and technology to provide sales coverage for more
than 24,000 Cisco Select a
nd Registered partners selling to small and
mid-market customers around the world.
* Partner Offering for Cisco WebEx - Cisco is introducing a partner-led
model for Cisco WebEx Meeting Center designed specifically for partners
that sell to small businesses. Cisco WebEx Meeting Center lets end users
share applications, presentations, documents, or a PC desktop in real
time and work with teams around the world without the time and expense
of travel. By selling Cisco WebEx Meeting Center, partners can offer
more complete collaboration solutions while helping customers use web
conferencing to accelerate productivity and drive business growth.
Partners can learn more about selling WebEx Meeting Center at
www.cisco.com/go/sbwebex.
Supporting Quotes
* Matthew Hurley, senior vice president, small business market, Bell; a
Canadian service provider partner:
"Bell is demonstrating our continued commitment to providing
cost-effective communication solutions to small and medium businesses.
The Cisco UC320W, designed for small businesses, has all of the features
and functionality a customer needs, it is simple to set-up and use,
affordable, and built for growing businesses."
* Reza Khorramian, vice president of sales, Business Communications
Solutions; a Cisco certified small business and advanced unified
communications partner:
"After a brief introduction and training on the Cisco Unified
Communications Manager Business Edition 3000, we installed it with a
live network connection to the public telephone network. Setup was very
straightforward and simple, especially compared with other PBX systems
we have installed. There were no issues getting the system installed and
adding and changing users and features. Installation did not require
in-depth network training and we were able to get the system
successfully making calls in less than an hour."
* Mark Wang, manager, Easier Way, an information system architecture
designer and Cisco Unified Communications customer:
"Cisco Unified Communications Manager Business Edition 3000 is a very
easy-to-use IP communications system for handling all our essential
collaboration needs. The management interface in the optional Chinese
language is very simple and uncomplicated, which allowed the system to
be set up very quickly. We were pleased that our business experienced
minimal disruption during the switch over."
* Barry O'Sullivan, senior vice president , Voice Technology Group,
Cisco:
"Building on our industry-leadership in the enterprise collaboration
market, Cisco is delivering innovative, unified communications solutions
that are tailor-made for the unique characteristics of small and
mid-market business partners and the customers they serve."
* Ian Pennell, senior vice president, Small Business Technology Group
and co-chair, Small Business Council, Cisco:
"Cisco continues to be 100 percent committed to giving our partners and
the customers they serve the easy-to-use technology innovation they need
to succeed. Our partners and customers have told us they want simple
unified communications solutions to help them stay ahead of their
competition. Cisco is ready to meet that need."
* Andrew Sage, vice president of worldwide Small Business Sales,
Cisco:
"Our partners are the center of our business at Cisco, and we will do
whatever we can to help them succeed. Our new Cisco Partner Advisor
initiative uses both people and technology to help our small and
mid-market business partners to begin or continue working with Cisco to
get the immediate sales and programs help they need."
Product Pricing and Availability
* Cisco Unified Communications 320W is currently available. List
pricing is $995.
* Cisco Unified Communications Manager Business Edition 3000 is
scheduled to be available in the second quarter of calendar year 2011.
List pricing is $12,400 for 100 users.
Videos:
* Rick Moran, vice president of marketing for Cisco's Small Business
Technology Group, elaborates on today's news:
http://www.yout
ube.com/watch?v=BE9HhISbhBA&feature=player_embedded
* A short demonstration of the Cisco Unified Communications Manager
Business Edition 3000:
Supporting Resources
* On Twitter, follow @Cisco_Channels:
http://twitter.com/Cisco_Channels and the #ciscops11 hash tag.
http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=+%23ciscops11.
* Visit Cisco Channels Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/CiscoChannels for Partner Summit updates,
videos and pictures.
* Visit the Channels blog: http://blogs.cisco.com/channels before and
during Partner Summit for event news, interviews, and daily recaps.
* Find out more about Cisco Unified Communications
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns151/networking_solutions_unified_communications_home.html?POSITION=social+media&COUNTRY_SITE=us&CAMPAIGN=SAMBA&CREATIVE=UC&REFERRING_SITE=Social+Media+Release+UC
* Visit Cisco Small Business website
http://www.cisco.com/cisco/web/solutions/small_business/index.html?POSITION=social+media&COUNTRY_SITE=us&CAMPAIGN=SAMBA&CREATIVE=SmallBusinessHome&REFERRING_SITE=Social+Media+Release+Mar02
* Visit Cisco Partner Central website
http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/index.html?POSITION=social+media&COUNTRY_SITE=us&CAMPAIGN=SAMBA&CREATIVE=PartnerCentral&REFERRING_SITE=Social+Media+Release+Mar02
* Visit the Cisco Channels blog
http://blogs.cisco.com/category/channels/
Technorati Tags:
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businesses, mid-market, unified communications, collaboration, partner
enablement, partner solutions, Cisco small business partners, Cisco
Unified Communications, Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco
Unified Communications Manager Business Edition, IP telephony, Cisco
Unified SIP Phone 3905, Cisco WebEx, WebEx, Cisco WebEx Meeting Center,
Cisco Partner Advisor, partner programs, partner initiatives, channel
partner
About Cisco Collaboration
From award-winning IP communications to mobility, customer care, Web
conferencing, messaging, enterprise social software, and interoperable
telepresence experiences, Cisco brings together network-based,
integrated collaboration solutions based on open standards. These
solutions, as well as services from Cisco and our partners, are designed
to help promote business growth, innovation and productivity. They are
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