Keith Masterton (NBN Co)
NBN Co has announced a new strategic deal with networking giant Cisco focused on joint education and engagement activities targeted at Australian small and medium businesses (SMB).
According to Keith Masterton, NBN Co general manager of business channels, the deal also extends to the distributors signed to its ICT channel program, which include Ingram Micro, Dicker Data, Westcon-Comstor and Aria Technologies.
“We look forward to working with Cisco to provide support for their business customers migrating to the NBN [National Broadband Network] broadband access network and help them to leverage transformative solutions to grow their operations," Masterton said.
Nykaj Nair, Cisco's segment leader for SMB in Australia and New Zealand, said that SMBs businesses play a crucial role as the backbone of the vendor's Australian economy.
“We are pleased to be working with NBN Co to help accelerate SMBs ability to connect, digitise, scale to global markets and grow their business,” Nair said.
Specifically, the companies will invest in joint digital marketing activities to help share how SMB’s can digitally transform their business leveraging business grade services from NBN Co.
Also, Cisco will invest in building offers and digital solutions for SMBs which will be bundled with NBN Co services to consume from their retail service providers.
"Web/video conferencing bundle with NBN’s business grade services to help SMB’s communicate and collaborate with their customers and constituents so that they can improve productivity and effectiveness," as explained Nair.
Masterton said that NBN Co is represented by more than 670 partners since the launch of the program in April. Of those, more than 195 of those now certified NBN business accredited advisers.
“There are also six phone and internet providers currently supporting the program by offering pre-sales advice, access to business-grade NBN solutions and assistance with opportunity management," Masterton added.
There are more than 450,000 businesses connected to the NBN access network with approximately 20,000 new business added to the network each month, according to NBN Co.
"From here, we expect to increase our collaboration with ICT vendors to deliver packages and solutions to support Australian small and medium businesses as they transition and transform over the NBN access network," Masterton added.
In October, NBN Co announced a deal with Dell EMC to provide support for business customers migrating to the NBN and help leverage transformative solutions provided by participating vendors.
"We’re pleased to announce we have signed a strategic collaboration agreement with Dell EMC, which will be focused on joint go-to-market plans executed in conjunction with our participating program distributors,” Masterton said at the time.
