By Sharmee Roy, CRN Network, August 19, 2009, 1500 hrs
Next on Cisco’s agenda is the consumer market. Its Consumer Business Group (CBG)—formerly known as Linksys by Cisco— has established a separate team and defined the products it will take to the market.
Suresh Balasubramanian, National Sales Director, India, Cisco Consumer Business Group, said, “For our consumer business, we want to make communication a live, visual and more personal experience. We believe that the market is going through a transition phase where consumers want a medium—whether it is for personal or professional communication—that is more visual. Our primary aim would be to capture this market transition for growth.”
This home and small office network products arm will now showcase wireless routers, access points and gateways, home monitoring equipment, graphic cards, and IP cameras.
According to Balasubramanian, retail will play a key role in helping the vendor reach out to the consumers and position itself as a player in the market. “Retail is a critical part of our business. Today 80 percent of our consumer business comes from organized retail players. As compared to last year, this year the retail business has contributed 20 percent to the revenues. Our retail strategy revolves around maintaining high-touch with the retail partners through its field team.”
The vendor already has strong tie-ups with LFRs like Croma, Reliance, Hypercity and IT retail partners.
In addition to 1,200 partners, the vendor is also working with SIs and service providers to target this market.
Currently, the vendor is working with four distributors—HCL Infosystems, Compuage, Redington and Ingram Micro. |