Networking giant Cisco took a hit in recent years as an overly complicated internal decision-making system took over, and slowed down the company to a grinding halt from a market standpoint.  After several very slow quarters the company is now restructuring, and it’s doing that in more ways than just cutting costs and making layoffs.  Cisco said it will invest $75 million into its SMB channel program named Partner Led by 2012, according to Andrew Sage, VP of worldwide Partner Led. The program is designed for SMBs.

“The reduction in expense across the whole company is to realign the macro expense structures,” Sage said. “But along with that comes the need to make sure we are investing in the places that have the biggest impact on Cisco and our partners.”

Partner Led is only one of two programs, with the second one being Customer Led that is meant for larger scale projects, meaning with enterprises and service providers.

Cisco has a very strong position in the networking industry but in light of the recent declines in growth rate investors have become somewhat unconfident. Yesterday brought with it some mixed news from the firm: on one hand it slashed its forecast for the next three years (again) from a 12 percent to 17 percent growth rate to only 5 to 7 percent.  But on the other hand, margins are expected to be comparatively high, and its Cius business tablet unit had a big announcement in hopes of progressing its mobile market interests.

Another update from Cisco this week, in addition to news of the company’s investment in its partner ecosystem, is a big contract with Shaw Communications to create a so-called “super” public Wi-Fi network that will cover some of Canada’s biggest cities including Vancouver.  This project is expected to come with a cost surpassing the $1 billion mark.