Linksys Eyes SMBs For Connected Office Products

With the number of small and medium businesses in the country shooting up, the demand for networking products has also risen. Linksys recently launched its range of Connected Office products to tap the potential in this space. Sanjeev Gupta, regional sales director – APAC, Linksys discusses the company’s business strategy to penetrate the Indian market.

What are the business challenges in India for Linksys’ Connected Office product line?

The small business market is a highly competitive but fragmented market. The Indian potential is huge with over 10 million small businesses in the country. Being a highly sensitive market, the main emphasis lies on the connection between the business market with their customers and partners through the Internet, deploying products and solutions which add flexibility to the way business is conducted and there is reduction on costs. The challenge for Linksys lies in understanding their unique and varied needs for flexibility. Hence Linksys’ Connected Office customers source their solutions from a wide variety of resellers and partners, which meet their cost-sensitivity and simplicity in deployment.

How does Linksys differentiate itself from its competitors?

Linksys is a major player in the sphere of wireless networking for the home and small office segments. Although our competition varies across different markets, our USP is our drive to make networking easy and affordable. Of course, we wouldn’t be able to achieve this without reliable world-class solutions. To give you an example, in our range of business series products, our Wireless Router WRVS4400N offers great speed and coverage. Additionally, with support from WMM i.e. Wi-Fi multimedia, there is an improved QoS (quality of service) over wireless connections for better video and voice performance. Moreover, QuickVPN IPSec VPN tunnel support provides secure remote user connectivity, whereas SPI Firewall and Intrusion Prevention secure the work from outside threats. It is these key features that differentiate Linksys’ products from others in the market.

What kind of value proposition does Linksys offer to its customers?

Linksys offers simple deploy-to-use products and solutions. Moreover they also enable the customers to augment their network. The VARs and Resellers can access to Linksys’ broad portfolio of point products to augment their customers existing networks. Additionally, it provides them with the ability to provide their customers with a complete end-to-end offering to address a new segment of the small business market.

Can you throw some more light on the recently launched Gigabit Advanced Smart Switch having 2GB uplink?

Growing businesses require cost effective, networking solutions that can scale with the changing business needs. The Linksys 24-port 10/100 + 2-port 10/100/1000 Gigabit Advanced Smart Switch with 2 Combo SFPs (SLM224G2) brings in a whole new level of intelligence and security to the network infrastructure at a cost effective price.

The SLM224G2 is an affordable, secure, reliable switch with simplified management for a growing business network. The SLM224G2’s extensive QoS features make the solution ideal for real-time applications like Voice and Video. This new SLM224G2 will be available in India very soon.