Cisco drives harder into education sector

Networking vendor Cisco Systems Australia is pushing hard into the education market, offering customers in this sector more preferential pricing on products and services delivered by its channel partners.

Cisco announced that it had extended special pricing for education customers to its 1800 and 2800 range of ISR (integrated services routers) and products from its recent acquisition of wireless switch vendor Airespace.

Special pricing was also available on the range of Linksys products and on services that are delivered by education resellers, said Tony Andrew, government account manager at Cisco Systems Australia.

In addition, Cisco’s finance arm Cisco Capital also announced a financing package for education buyers. Private schools could receive up to $100,000 in pre-approved finance for Cisco and Linksys technology purchases while public schools could apply for $250,000.

Schools have the option to lease or purchase equipment and services outright,” said Andrew.

Cisco’s Connected Schools has been running since mid-2003 and there are 40 Cisco partners nationally that are offering education customers special pricing.

Cisco Australia and New Zealand boss Ross Fowler has earmarked education and health as two major growth areas for the networking vendor over the next few years.

All resellers, regardless of their partner status with Cisco, would buy products with preferential pricing for their education customers through distribution. Cisco and Linksys products are distributed by Express Data, LAN Systems and Ingram Micro. Multimedia Technology also distributes Linksys.