By Donna Cooney, Director, Partner Development, Collaboration, Cisco Canada
Recently we introduced several collaboration products, programs and incentives aimed at helping our channel partners and their midmarket customers. Why? Well, if you haven’t been following our midmarket blog series then you may not be aware of just how important these businesses are in Canada, or how large the opportunity is for our partner community in this space.
At the heart of these businesses is communication. How employees communicate, and the tools that make this easier, faster and simpler, can make the difference between a business that succeeds and one that doesn’t. And for many businesses in the midmarket, figuring out which solution is right for them can be an overwhelming task.
What this means is clear: there is a growing partner opportunity in the midmarket. In fact, one in four Canadians work for a mid-sized company and we are committed to investing in new programs and technologies to help these businesses – and the partners that serve them – thrive.
Or as we like to say, it is now easier for partners to do business with Cisco in the midmarket.
Highlighting our announcement this month were enhancements to our midmarket collaboration solution, the Cisco Business Edition 6000 (BE6000). We’ve fine-tuned the already purpose-built BE6000 to meet the needs of small and mid-sized customers, introducing a new 25-user solution that provides growing businesses with the flexibility to choose the exact collaboration solutions they need.
If you aren’t familiar with the BE6000 and what it can do (and it can do a lot of things), the BE6000 delivers advanced voice and unified communications (UC) applications with the features and performance typically only found in enterprise-level products.
Imagine your company, with two offices and multiple employees working from home or the road, having access to Cisco’s BYOD and mobility solutions, the full Cisco Jabber experience with desktop and mobile IM and presence and our WebEx conferencing suite, all in one product and purpose-built for your company size.
That’s what the BE6000 can do.
This gives our partners even more options when working with Canadian small and mid-sized businesses to find the collaboration solution they need. But we didn’t stop there. We listened to our partners and introduced something I’m personally excited about: the Express Collaboration Specialization.
The Express Collaboration Specialization is designed specifically for partners focused on the midmarket and – this is why I’m so excited – provides a new entry point into our collaboration partner programs, with partner investments and requirements that align to our midmarket portfolio.
We also simplified our Telepresence Advanced Technology Programs, enhanced our midmarket collaboration promotion and introduced our Innovate with Cisco solutions for midsize businesses marketing campaign. Combined, these announcements provide our Canadian partners with the resources they need to successfully serve Canada’s midmarket as they look for the technologies that can scale with their growing business.
Partners, you can find out more about all of these programs, and when they are available, in Partner Marketing Central.
What do you think about our new midmarket collaboration announcements? Leave a comment below.
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