Cisco Systems is introducing the Smart Business Architecture for Midsize Networks, a series of blueprints designed to simplify solutions for businesses with between 250 and 1,000 users.

The launch of the Smart Business Architecture began a year ago when Cisco examined its mid-size business product portfolio and the challenges partners were having in the mid-market, said Joel Conover, senior manager of solutions marketing at Cisco Systems. It's a unique market segment that has enterprise-like requirements, but also has very limited IT resources, he explained.

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The Smart Business Architecture was designed to make it easier for partners to sell the products and for customers to more easily absorb them while still getting the features and functionality they need, he said. The solution was to build a series of pre-configured systems that give partners recommendations of products to use with their mid-market customers, as well as command line options that can be cut-and-pasted from the book into products, taking them to 99 per cent ready in one step. The final one per cent is in making it right for the specific environment (host names, IP addresses, etc.), he said.

"And then there's a testing element," Conover said. 

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