Cisco will focus on the small and medium-sized enterprise market, Cisco Designed provides preferred services

[51CTO.com original article] Enterprises have always been regarded as the "cells" of the national economy, and the large-scale and widespread small and medium-sized enterprises are the most active organizations in this group of "cells" in China. Affected by the epidemic in 2020, small and medium-sized enterprises, which have always been small in scale and weak in risk resistance, have also encountered great challenges. More and more small and medium-sized enterprises have become more dependent on technology to ensure the continuity of business development. In order to enable more small and medium-sized enterprises to rely on digital transformation to calmly cope with the challenges of business transformation, two senior executives of Cisco recently appeared at a media communication meeting, not only deeply interpreting the "2020 Asia Pacific Small and Medium Enterprises Digital Maturity Report" released in July this year, but also firmly conveying Cisco's determination to serve the small and medium-sized enterprise market.

You read that right! Cisco is really going to focus on the small and medium-sized enterprise market

In people's traditional impression, Cisco has always served large and medium-sized customers and key industry customers. The technical threshold and price of its products and solutions are not affordable for small and medium-sized enterprise customers. Therefore, when Cisco announced that it would attach importance to the small and medium-sized enterprise market and provide products and services, many people inevitably had a series of questions: If Cisco copies the products and solutions that serve large enterprises to small and medium-sized enterprises, will it not be "unsuitable"? In the price comparison that small and medium-sized enterprises care about most, how can Cisco compete with its peers? In the small and medium-sized enterprise market, which has always been the main battlefield of domestic manufacturers, can Cisco, an "outsider", do a good job?

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Cisco Global Vice President and Greater China CEO Huang Zhiming said that Cisco is looking at the development of SMEs with a growth perspective. The "2020 Asia Pacific SME Digital Maturity Report" predicts that by 2024, the full digital transformation of SMEs will contribute 1.5-1.8 trillion US dollars to China's GDP and promote the overall GDP of the Asia-Pacific region to grow by 3.1 trillion US dollars, injecting a shot in the arm for the post-epidemic economic recovery process. On the one hand, the potential of SMEs is constantly expanding, and on the other hand, due to the limitation of investment scale, it is difficult for them to form professional teams to deploy IT projects. The demand for IT is actually more urgent. This is obviously a huge and attractive market for Cisco, which has a mature full line of IT products.

During the interview, Huang Zhiming's point of view was very objective. He said that SMEs are the locomotive driving the rapid economic development. During the epidemic, the business of SMEs was greatly affected, but once the economy recovers, SMEs will also grow the fastest and most flexibly. "Cisco hopes to enable SMEs to enjoy the same services as large enterprises through more automated products." Huang Zhiming said that many SMEs have now started the internationalization process. Cisco is an international company that can provide consistent services to SMEs around the world and build an international brand with the help of Cisco products. "So this is also one of Cisco's advantages."

Cisco Designed for small and medium-sized enterprises

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Lin Xiangyang, senior vice president of Cisco Greater China, general manager of emerging business in Greater China and general manager of partner business unit in Greater China, said frankly that in fact, there are many similarities between the IT needs of large enterprises and SMEs, such as security, business continuity, collaboration and other needs. The difference is that large enterprises have abundant IT talents and IT resources, while SMEs lack IT talents and often find it difficult to achieve IT goals. Therefore, if the same IT needs are to be met, it is necessary to provide SMEs with easier-to-use, more automated products and more thoughtful services.

"Fortunately, many of Cisco's IT products are designed with ease of use in mind, so we have many natural advantages in terms of products." Lin Xiangyang gave an example, Cisco's Meraki has a simple interface and online control process, which not only allows SMEs to use it with zero barriers, but also when SMEs expand in different cities, Meraki can help SMEs quickly deploy their business while maintaining a high degree of compliance and security.

In order to allow SMEs to quickly enjoy Cisco's services, Cisco created a new brand called "Cisco Designed SME Business Optimization". Lin Xiangyang revealed that Cisco anticipated the various difficulties that SMEs might face, including problems encountered during application and installation, and then put products that can solve these pain points under the Cisco Designed brand, such as Catalyst 1000, Meraki, Webex, etc.

"Cisco provides a comprehensive set of services from multiple dimensions including networking, computing, collaboration and security, helping SMEs to integrate their needs from business to technology in advance." Lin Xiangyang concluded. The reporter learned that Cisco will also recruit a group of new partners who focus on SMEs and provide different IT solutions according to the different development stages of SMEs.

At the end of the interview, the two leaders were also very confident about the competitiveness of Cisco products in the small and medium-sized markets. Huang Zhiming said that Cisco would not directly copy the products of large enterprises to small and medium-sized enterprises, because it had to consider the user's needs in terms of cost and application to integrate Cisco's best products. In other words, "the most suitable is the best." Lin Xiangyang added that he suggested that small and medium-sized enterprises should not only look at the initial investment in IT, but should look at the overall investment, and more importantly, how much value these investments have brought. Those that can bring value should increase investment. "The most important advantage of Cisco is that it can provide the most needed solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises in different industries and at different stages of development, understand their needs, and truly bring value to customers."

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