By ChannelTimes Staff
Mumbai, Dec 03, 2009 1401 hrs IST

To cater to the growing opportunities in the commercial and SMB segments, Cisco India plans to appoint over 700 reseller partners in the West alone. The vendor currently has around 300 partners in the western region.

Cisco will also extend its channel base in other parts of the country.

As part of its SMB strategy, the company will also be training its channel partners on the implementation of its products. The training program, which will be conducted for over a week, will be available at partner's convenience and will provide information and support to partners across various technology portals that have been set up by the vendor.

According to Patrick Mathias, VP-sales (West) Cisco, India & Saarc, partners will be hired on the basis of industry verticals. Currently, 5 percent of our business comes from the SMB segment and we are looking at doubling the figure in another two years time, he said.

In addition, Cisco has rolled out a NOW (Network On Wheels) van. The company has invested around Rs 2 crore in networking equipments for this mobile van, Mathias said.

In the first phase of NOW, the company has covered eight states -- Cisco plan to cover 50 more cities in the next eight months.

Cisco will showcase the van during COM IT, the annual trade show of Mumbai based Trade Association of Information Technology. Partners can access the van by booking it in advance for their SMB customers.