Cisco's run rate for investing in the SMB space is $2 billion, and it defines the SMB market as serving between 20 and 1,000 users, according to Peter Alexander, vice president of worldwide commercial marketing at Cisco in San Jose, Calif.

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Those businesses "are increasingly adopting high-value information technology that two years ago was only available to the enterprise," he said.

Cisco has created blueprints for networks supporting those sized customers, along with product bundles that provide price breaks to lower the cost barrier for SMBs, Alexander said.

Those bundles, which offer a 40 percent savings to SMB customers, include router with integrated voice, IP communications, IP phone and phone license as well as router with integrated security and VPN bundles.

In its drive to better serve SMB customers, Cisco also enhanced or added new ease-of-use tools that "show how Cisco abstracts the complexity of intelligent networking without removing the value of it," Alexander said. "A user can configure a virtual LAN and Quality of Service with relative simplicity."

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