CNET también está disponible en español. Don't show this again. "There is growth in spending for networking in this market," said Kevin Outcalt, senior director of marketing for Cisco's Worldwide Commercial Market Segment. "What we're seeing is that (these) customers are catching up to the application curve that (larger companies) went through a few years ago.". The move is just one part of Cisco's response to an industry downturn that has lasted far longer, and cut far more deeply, than the one-time highflier had expected. The company's ebullient CEO, John Chambers, was notorious for projecting unceasing, skyrocketing growth rates even as the market started to crash, and has only recently traded in that optimism for a darker outlook.

The networking giant is hardly looking to small business to replace the collapse of the once-strong telecommunications sector, But in its quest to slow its own financial bleeding, it is looking to make up ground wherever it can, The company cites projections by New York-based research and consulting firm AMI-Partners that say small and medium-sized businesses in the United States, defined as organizations with fewer than 1,000 employees, witch yoongi iphone case will spend more than $223 billion on information technology and communications in 2002..

Only a tiny fraction of that figure is spent on gear or services that Cisco can provide. But the company also cites research showing a third of the companies it considers likely customers believe that Cisco is their "primary network vendor" but do not buy all their gear from the company. That's an immediate opportunity to add to its 38 percent market share in those areas, Outcalt said. The drive appears to be more about marketing, support and distribution than about changing product lines. The company already has a well-developed set of products for relatively small-business customers, ranging from VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) systems to high-end local network routers.

However, Cisco has not previously spent considerable time developing distribution channels to move these products beyond large companies or in developing support services for smaller customers and resellers, witch yoongi iphone case Helping customers help themselves As a part of its new push, the company is developing a set of Web-based services that help potential customers assess their own network needs, or help other companies selling Cisco gear design a package of networking products for their own customers, The company is also pushing hard into the managed services market, looking to help link Net service providers and their own customers with networking gear that will help support e-commerce sites or Web-based applications such as customer relationship management tools or sales databases..

Analysts say this is an important push, even if it won't necessarily bring tremendous amounts of revenue today. The growth of Net services means that business customers will increasingly need networking equipment on their own premises, and it will behoove Cisco--or any of its competitors--to have its own equipment on both sides of the connections. "When the market is out of recovery, I don't think service providers will want to do business with network providers that aren't on the customer premises," said Kneko Burney, an In-Stat/MDR analyst.