Cisco Plows Deeper Into IoT With New System, Products, Services

Cisco (CSCO) was among the first system vendors to pump up the Internet of Everything (think the Internet of Things with people, processes and data added in).

Now the vendor is bringing to the party a wide range of IoT parts from various corners of the company and adding in 15 new products into what it’s calling an IoT System. The idea behind the new platform is an infrastructure to manage large scale deployment of networked devices and objects and analyze the resulting data.

Cisco figures that in five short years some 50 billion devices and objects will be Internet facing but in the meantime only 1 percent of things actually are connected today. The vendor has taken to calling the inevitable tsunami as the “wave of digitization” and has positioned its new IoT System as the mechanism to handle the whole shebang.

“The Cisco IoT System provides a comprehensive set of IoT technologies and products that simplify and accelerate the deployment of infrastructure for the Internet of Things,” said Kip Compton, Cisco IoT Systems and Software Group vice president and general manager. “This unique systems approach delivers a framework that makes it possible to deploy, accelerate and innovate with IoT.”

Cisco’s IoT System includes 15 new IoT-specific products, spanning a range of network connectivity, including routers, a switch, a wireless access point, cybersecurity cameras, and data analytics services and tools for compiling data from the network’s edges. A Management and Automation IoT Field Network Director aims to monitor and customize all the component parts of an IoT deployment in the field.

The networking giant’s IoT infrastructure is founded on what Cisco is calling the Six Pillars necessary to construct an IoT system. Those “pillars” include network connectivity featuring purpose-built routing, switching, and wireless products in ruggedized and non-ruggedized versions; Fog Computing distributed infrastructure to extend analytics to the network’s edge; a unified cyber and physical security system; data analytics; management and automation; and APIs for all manner of partners to design, develop and deploy their own applications on the IoT System’s foundation.

Cisco said that GE (Predix), Itron (Riva), OSISoft (PI), smartFOA in Japan, Bit Stew, Davra, SK Solutions, Toshiba and others already have ported their software apps to run on Cisco’s Fog Computing system. Recent addition Covacsis is leveraging Cisco’s IOx for predictive analytics in the manufacturing sector, the company said.

“The Cisco IoT System allows us to reach new markets like transportation and further expand our offerings in the defense industry,” said Ryan Kendrick, Klas Telecom chief technology officer.