Cisco’s Canadian SMB push

Lissa Ricci, senior leader for small business at Cisco Canada

“I’m married to a Canadian entrepreneur, so it’s very personal to me that I help small businesses succeed in this country,” Lissa Ricci, senior leader of Cisco Canada’s small business unit tells us in this edition of the podcast.

Announced at Partner Summit in November, Designed for Business is a new brand, campaign, and program designed to help Cisco fight what it admits is the uphill battle of becoming as big a player in the small business market as it is in the enterprise space. In this edition of the podcast, Ricci joins us to discuss the company’s small business ambitions in Canada, and what it means for the company’s partners.

We discuss:

Ricci’s new role at Cisco Canada and the timing for Cisco’s new focus on the SME segment;
the company’s existing SMB stack, including WebEx, Umbrella, Meraki, AppDynamics, and Duo;
the timeline for new products purpose-designed for SMB customers;
the opportunity for Cisco and its partners in the Canadian small business market;
what the company’s focus on small business means to the company’s partners;
the plan for getting smaller customers away from retail, and engaged with Cisco partners;
how Cisco plans to work with new types of partners in the small business space; and
what we can expect from Cisco’s small business solutions unit over the course of 2020.

All that and more in this edition of the ChannelBuzz.ca Podcast.