Since our acquisition of Meraki in late 2012, you have heard us talking about the midmarket and new opportunities for channel partners and customers. I’m pleased to say that today, at the Cisco Partner Summit in Boston, we have some exciting updates for you. Specifically, we’ll focus on our Made for Midmarket portfolio which includes a range of new product offerings, services and solutions designed for midsize customers.
As part of Cisco’s newly formed Cloud Networking Group, we are unveiling our complete cloud managed networking portfolio specifically focused for midmarket deployments, consisting of security appliances, switches and wireless LANs.
Get Your Heads in the Cloud – Services and Revenue Opportunities
New for partners today we are introducing the Cisco Meraki Managed Services Dashboard – bringing together a number of features for Managed Service Providers (MSP) to offer cloud-managed networking as a service to their customers. This MSP dashboard features specific tools, analytics and monitoring capabilities and is built to allow our service providers to manage end-customer networks easily from a central location while still maintaining separation and security of each customer network.
Key Highlights of the Managed Services Dashboard
- MSP Portal – Service providers can easily monitor the health of end-customer networks from a centralized location.
- Manage your Brand: MSPs can customize the logo on the dashboard to promote their own brand with end-customers. Cisco will work directly with the MSP to customize the content.
- Support Ticketing: Easy for MSPs to create, monitor and respond to support cases with Cisco staff.
- Remote Live Tools: A complete set of tools that make remote monitoring of the network significantly easier – a perfect fit for Helpdesk or Network Operations Center (NOC) staff.
- Partner Benefits: Using the new MSP dashboard, partners can increase profits through managed services, enable existing MSPs to profitably grow their midmarket offering and allow traditional VARs to quickly introduce managed service offerings.
It doesn’t end here… also new from Cisco this week is the Catalyst 2960-X series of stackable gigabit Ethernet access switches.
New Catalyst 2960-X Switches
The announcement of the Catalyst 2960-X switches provides our customers with yet another opportunity to cost-effectively address their growing business needs with intelligent services. The Catalyst 2960-X is a perfect fit for midmarket customers who are dealing with challenges associated with BYOD scalability and security – many of the same needs as a big business, but with smaller IT staffs and budgets to meet them.
The new Cisco Catalyst 2K switches doubles the scale of the previous generation of Cat2K switches, while adding application visibility, routing options, and redundant power supply options to provide customers maximum investment protection.
“Green” Energy-Saving Benefits
The Cisco Catalyst 2960-X was designed to reduce the total cost of ownership over comparative industry switches with energy-saving features that can reduce power consumption by up to 80%.
How does this energy-saving performance compare with the rest of the industry? For context, IDC reported roughly 230 million comparable switch ports were sold in 2012[1]. Not that we’re being greedy – but if these were all Catalyst 2960-X units, that would mean roughly 14.4 Billion kWh of energy saved.
What could you do with that energy?
- Shut down the Hoover Dam for 3.4 years
- Power all households in San Francisco for 3.3 years
- Make 76 round trips to Mars in a Toyota Prius, 45,000 round trips to the Moon, or 870,000 trips around the Earth
- Reduce CO2 emissions by 7.5 billion pounds (3.4 billion kg), the equivalent of planting 193 million trees, the same as every household in the United States planting 1.7 trees
The Cisco Catalyst 2960-X switches will continue to make the Catalyst 2K family the world’s most widely-deployed access switch by addressing business challenges of today and helping customers prepare for the future.
This is just the beginning. Cisco will continue to invest and build out our midmarket overall portfolio of solutions and technology across all areas of our business, for partners to get up and running quickly. From the datacenter, with the Virtualized Foundation Smart Solution, to Collaboration, and beyond – we have lots more in store for partners.
It’s clear that Cisco has its finger on the midmarket pulse. We estimate a $25B technology opportunity by FY16 and approximately $5B will be for networking equipment in our core wireless and cloud networking franchise. We have the broad resources and pedigree to lead in this market. We are excited to grow in this market with our customers and partners, today and tomorrow. For more information on the complete midmarket strategy, which includes marketing and channel support, in addition to the portfolio, check out today’s post from Andrew Sage, Vice President of Worldwide Partners Sales,
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