Cisco to invest $20m in new Sydney Webex Data Center

Cisco has announced that it will be investing $20 million in a new Webex Data Center in Sydney.

According to Webex VP and GM Javed Khan, Australia is one of the biggest users worldwide of Cisco's collaboration suite, with more than 230 million Webex meeting minutes and over 12 million Webex Meeting participants during 2018.

Across the nation, around 2.5 million business users are running Cisco Cloud Calling platforms; and several of the largest Cisco cloud-connected video deployments globally are in Australia.

The world's largest deployment of Cisco's Webex Boards is also in Australia, Khan said at Cisco Live 2019 in Melbourne.

The $20 million datacentre investment comes in addition to Cisco's AU$61 million investment plan announced last week to help Australia's digital transformation.

The networking giant's success down under saw Cisco Australia's net profit rise from AU$30.2 million to AU$32 million in FY18.

This was despite a slight drop in revenue, from AU$1.87 billion in FY17 down to AU$1.85 billion in FY18. Of this, Cisco Australia made AU$1.13 billion from the sale of goods, and AU$410.1 million from professional services.

During the financial year, Cisco Australia had moved into the small and medium-sized business (SMB) market segment, and announced in July the launch of its Cisco Start portfolio following 18 months of trials in Australia.

At the time, head of Distribution, Channels, and SMB Segment for Cisco ANZ Nykaj Nair said the networking giant's dedicated SMB portfolio is aimed at providing solutions across collaboration, mobile platforms, wireless offerings, hybrid cloud infrastructure, and cybersecurity capabilities.

"Cisco has invested in a purpose-built dedicated portfolio for small businesses called Cisco Start. Cisco Start allows small businesses to adopt enterprise-like technology or enterprise-class technology at affordable costs," Nair said.

"Enterprise-class technology that's reliable, that's simple, and that's secure. The way the portfolio is designed, it takes into account the scalability that a small business needs as they grow. So the platform grows as they grow, and we've built flexible consumption models for SMBs to alleviate any of the cash-flow concerns that small businesses usually have."

Speaking with ZDNet last year, Cisco ANZ vice president Ken Boal said Cisco's acquisitions of Meraki, OpenDNS, and BroadSoft enabled it to push into the SMB space.

Disclosure: Corinne Reichert travelled to Cisco Live 2019 in Melbourne as a guest of Cisco

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