Back in March 03, when Charlie Giancarlo spoke of why Cisco would pay $500M for Linksys, his explanation centered on the consumer and SOHO markets. "OK," we thought, "we don’t understand why Cisco wants to be a consumer company, but Cisco’s full of smart people, and they probably see the world differently than we do. Life is beautiful." We went back to sleep.

We awoke with a start when, earlier this year, Cisco revealed it had SMB ambitions for Linksys.  Try as we might, we couldn’t find evidence of Charlie having said much about the SMB market when Linksys was bought.  (SOHO yes, SMB no.  We love acronyms.)  Indeed, Cisco has never been known for paying attention to the SMB market, and seems to have ignored it generally.  We know several SMBs whose owners have taken matters into their own hands and boldly incorporated Linksys "consumer" products into their IT environments; we’re pretty sure many others have acted similarly.  Now Cisco seems ready to take advantage of that trend, and, in an effort to stitch the world together, is launching Linksys Partner Connection (LPC).   LPC will roll out in August in North America, and will roll out in the rest of the world over the next 6-12 months.  The aim of the program seems to be to integrate the Linksys and Cisco channels, and appropriate databases have reportedly been merged.  Should be exciting. 

LPC is being deployed in the wake of Big Cisco’s attempts to make inroads into the SMB market on its own.  We expect some growing pains, and will be watching with interest.  Snarky bloggers love a kludge.