Techaisle Blog

Techaisle's in-depth interviews with Cisco's SMB customers reveal a deep commitment from the vendor to solving their unique business challenges through its AI-powered offerings. Direct feedback from SMB customers, gathered through Techaisle's extensive interviews, confirms that Cisco's AI solutions are resonating precisely because they target the specific operational challenges these businesses face. SMBs are increasingly recognizing AI's potential, with many already having AI projects in the trial/pilot phase, and 92% expected to use AI by the end of 2025. A remarkable 75% of firms believe delaying AI adoption would lead to missed opportunities. Despite this positive outlook, many SMBs struggle with how to begin their AI adoption journey. The path is often fraught with numerous challenges, ranging from a lack of internal expertise and budgetary constraints to technical hurdles like reliance on legacy systems, limited network bandwidth, or data restrictions. Softer challenges, such as resistance to change or the absence of a clear strategy, can also impede effective AI adoption, sometimes leading to "checkbox solutions" that fail to meet real business needs.

Cisco’s Strategic Approach: Overcoming SMB Challenges with Tailored AI Innovations

Cisco deeply understands the unique needs of SMBs. Cisco’s AI-powered ecosystems are specifically designed to help SMBs unlock significant value without the burden of complex, stand-alone systems, addressing pressing challenges like limited resources, skills gaps, and operational inefficiencies. Let me first outline how Cisco’s approach to AI helps SMBs mitigate common adoption hurdles:

Dell Technologies World 2025 (DTW) recently provided a comprehensive look into Dell's strategy and vision, with a particular focus on the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for businesses of all sizes. Keynotes from Michael Dell and Jeff Clarke, alongside detailed briefings on Client Solutions Group (CSG) and Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG), painted a picture of a company positioning itself as the end-to-end partner for the AI journey. While much attention often focuses on hyperscalers and large enterprises, Dell offers significant opportunities and tailored strategies for the midmarket as well as the vital channel partners who serve them.

Here are my seven key takeaways:

1. The Dell AI Factory is an End-to-End AI Framework, Not Just Hardware

Dell introduced and expanded upon the concept of the Dell AI Factory, describing it as an unmatched set of capabilities in the industry designed to help businesses get started with Generative AI and scale it. It is presented as an open, modular infrastructure with a rich ecosystem, delivering powerful GPUs, scalable storage, high-throughput networking, curated tooling, and integrated cutting-edge models, supported by deployment services. This framework covers the entire computing architecture for modern AI workloads, from PCs to data centers and the edge. Dell has helped over 3,000 businesses build their factories and launched over 200 new features since its inception a year ago. The vision is for customers to bring their own company data to the AI Factory, driving unique business outcomes.

Why this is important for Midmarket and Channel Partners: This framework provides a structured approach to AI adoption. For midmarket, it demystifies the complex landscape of AI infrastructure by offering a seemingly integrated and supported stack. They don't need to piece together disparate components or become AI experts overnight. For channel partners, the AI Factory is a complete solution portfolio to take to customers. Dell is making it easier to consume and deploy through reference architectures and packaged software. This enables partners to concentrate on delivering value and outcomes, rather than merely selling individual pieces of hardware. The concept of bringing "your own company data" to drive outcomes resonates strongly with businesses of all sizes, emphasizing that AI value is tied to their unique operations and data, which partners are often intimately familiar with.

The accelerating pace of technological evolution has undeniably cemented information technology's role as a fundamental driver of success across the business spectrum. However, within the dynamic SMB and mid-market segments, the intricate dependencies and escalating complexities of IT infrastructure and application portfolios present perhaps the most significant challenges. As these organizations grapple with managing an ever-widening array of sophisticated technologies, the demand for knowledgeable, trustworthy guidance transcends mere preference; it becomes a strategic imperative. Pertinently, Techaisle research consistently highlights that a substantial majority of SMBs and mid-market firms actively seek out and favor suppliers who provide technology advisory services firmly rooted in addressing specific business issues, valuing providers who demonstrate a genuine, vested interest in their long-term success. Navigating this increasingly complex IT landscape necessitates more than just product procurement; it demands the consistent presence and expertise of a trusted advisor. It is precisely this critical market need for informed, reliable guidance that Dell Technologies strategically addresses.

More Than Sales: Dell's Investment in Small Business Advisory and Success

Dell Technologies recognized this imperative early on, launching its Small Business Advisor program in May 2016 with the core mission of simplifying technology complexity and smoothing the path from consideration to purchase. My earlier exploration of this program highlighted Dell’s commitment, including a substantial multi-million dollar investment in training and resources, underscoring a dedication to small business success. This initiative was built on the understanding that while there might be a perception of Dell advisors solely focusing on PC sales, the reality is a commitment to advising and selling end-to-end solutions. For more intricate requirements, such as digital transformation initiatives, Dell established clear second-level escalation pathways, ensuring that front-line advisors could connect small business needs with large order specialists or technical resources capable of providing comprehensive, end-to-end infrastructure guidance and configure solutions tailored to specific customer requirements. The emphasis was, and continues to be, on advisors acting not as mere sales agents but as experts capable of assessing a small business's position in its technology journey and offering contextual guidance. Its objective is to counsel customers on their immediate needs, potential future solutions, necessary fixes, and optimal next steps, fostering a more holistic and positive customer experience.

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN), launched in 2012, has been instrumental in AWS’s success since its inception in 2006. This vibrant ecosystem fosters collaboration and the development of innovative solutions for customers globally. Recognizing the significant role of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the global economy, AWS introduced the SMB Competency Program in January 2024 as a strategic initiative tailored to empower partners serving this crucial segment. This program, the first AWS go-to-market specialization explicitly for partners serving SMBs, was developed after extensive discussions with partners to understand their unique requirements deeply. Now, AWS is doubling down on its commitment by introducing a suite of enhanced benefits designed to accelerate the growth of these partners further and enable them to deliver even greater value to their SMB customers.

The AWS SMB Competency recognizes partners with a proven track record of helping SMBs thrive in the cloud by offering rigorously vetted solutions in areas such as migration, modernization, security, data storage, disaster recovery, AI/ML, and SaaS solutions. The inaugural cohort of 30 partners unanimously endorsed the program. This is crucial as 55% of customers view, as per Techaisle data, partner competencies as “absolutely essential” when assessing partner capabilities. The SMB market presents a substantial opportunity, with SMBs and midmarket firms projected to spend over $650 billion on cloud solutions in 2025 – Techaisle data. Notably, AWS is actively focusing on both the "middle" and previously "overlooked" SMB segments, recognizing the evolving channel dynamics and the pivotal role SMBs now play.

The new benefits amplify the existing advantages of the competency, reinforcing AWS's dedication to a thriving ecosystem focused on the unique needs of SMBs. These enhanced offerings include: