Cisco Introduces New Routers For Hong Kong’s Smaller Offices

From its Hong Kong office, Cisco Systems Inc. is delivering to North
Asia two new access router families designed to bring “big business”
wide-area networking benefits to small companies, remote offices and
telecommuters.

According to Cisco, Hong Kong is itself an excellent location to market
the 1720 series and the 800 series routers because the Special
Administrative Region has an ideal business environment for small
companies.

“Hong Kong is Asia’s most service-oriented economy with tens of thousands
of smaller companies engaged in information-intensive business,” said Wei
Cheng, Cisco’s market development manager for SME’s.

“There are now strong incentives for these companies to get online in
order to compete more effectively in the global marketplace.”

“Cisco’s 1720 series and 800 series access routers which use the same
Cisco IOS software that drives 80 percent of the Internet are an
excellent choice for Hong Kong companies wishing to adopt the virtual
business model,” Cheng said.

The Cisco 1720 series, a modular family of access routers, deliver virtual
private network (VPN) capabilities through Cisco IOS software. The router
series won the “Best Networking Hardware of the Show” award at last months
Comdex 98.

The Cisco 800 series, consisting of four different models, permit
corporate telecommuters and small offices to deploy networking that
utilizes telephone, data and fax communications in order to rapidly
deliver Internet access or corporate network access.

“Virtual private networks can significantly reduce WAN costs, improve
global connectivity and provide new capabilities such as secure extranet
communications among business partners. With Cisco IOS software 1720 and
800 series users get a comprehensive set of VPN features,” said Cheng.

“Hong Kong has one of the best telecommunications infrastructures in the
world,” said Wei Cheng.

“The new networking solutions we’re introducing today enable smaller
companies to leverage this infrastructure in order to get connected to the
Internet, to mobile employees, to business partners and to customers.”