KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, December 30, 2008 – Cisco today announced an initiative to help small and medium businesses (SMBs) in Malaysia gain greater agility and efficiency in serving increasingly sophisticated consumers who are comfortable with the Internet and Web 2.0.

Cisco values the total global market for small-business networking and communications products and services at USD16 billion in 2009 with USD10 billion of this coming from companies with less than 100 employees. The “One Voice” campaign is expected to reach out to SMB owners in Malaysia.

Anne Abraham, Cisco Malaysia’s Managing Director said, “Small businesses are the lifeblood of today's economy and in today’s challenging economic environment, it’s critical that small-business owners have a technology partner that they can trust to help them find and deploy the right solutions to grow their businesses.

“With the widest range of solutions, from value-driven point products to expandable and upgradeable solutions to grow on, Cisco can meet any small business’ communications needs.”

Cisco views the SMB sector as an important growth thrust to its Malaysian business. In Malaysia, SMBs contributed 35 per cent to the nation’s GDP in 2006 and are expected to make an increased contribution of 37 per cent to the national GDP by the year 2010.

Stanley Lim, Director of Commercial SMB, Cisco Malaysia opined, “The No. 1 priority for small-business owners is growing their companies, not being technology experts. Small businesses learn about, and implement technology in very different ways from large enterprises. Cisco brings the technology conversation to a level small business owners can understand via campaigns which address business challenges, rather than technology.”

Cisco’s “One Voice” campaign leverages Web 2.0 functionalities and will offer the following highlights:

• SMB Summit Site http://www.cisco.com/web/MY/solutions/smb/index.html -Cisco recently unveiled its SMB website for channel partners and SMB customers. The SMB Summit Site provides information on Cisco’s products and solutions for the SMB market, activities planned for SMB, partner locations, recent news and access to key documentation produced by Cisco. Visitors to the site can participate in a weekly e-contest and stand a chance to win a Sony PSP, amongst other attractive prizes. The website also includes related links and the latest promotions, as well as a section with regular updates and developments of the One Voice campaign. 
• SMB Connections Seminar (15 January 2009 @ Sunway Resort Hotel & Spa, Petaling Jaya) -A conference to educate partners and SMB owners on networking technology solutions in addressing businesses challenges and overcome technical obstacles and business threats. The seminar will include partner alignment workshops, break-out sessions and present the opportunity for participants to share experiences with peers.  
• Live Industry Seminar -The seminar will highlight Cisco’s IP telephony and networking extensions across the SMB segment. There will be ‘live” demos of Cisco’s networking and mobility solutions and a dialogue session between Cisco specialists and existing customers on the benefits of Cisco’s technology in driving business productivity. 
• Ongoing promotions and product bundles with selected partners and resellers for Cisco’s Unified Communications, switches, routers and wireless products. Visit http://www.cisco.com/web/MY/solutions/smb/index.html for more details.

The roll-out of this campaign comes on the back of Cisco’s recent announcement of a US$100 million investment in its global small-business initiative. Cisco has created the Cisco Small Business Technology Group (SBTG), which will develop technologies focused on six areas which small-businesses highlighted as top priorities for enabling business growth: connectivity, security, remote access, productivity, customer interaction and customer support.

Cisco will launch its first products developed exclusively for the small business in January. These products will consist of video surveillance, data storage and wireless office communications.