Cisco has jumped into the Internet of things (IoT) waters with both feet. In 2013 it highlighted its research, solution development and partnership efforts around the Internet of Everything (IoE) with an announcement that the IoE has a USD14 trillion worldwide economic value (i.e., profit boost for global business). In October, 2013 Cisco hosted a technology and partner event in Barcelona called the IoT World Forum.
Cisco brings considerable expertise and resources to the IoT ecosystem including a strong product-line, deep touch with enterprise IT departments and a top-notch channel partner program. On what aspects of IoT do we believe Cisco will focus in 2014?
- Acquisitions – There are pieces of the IoT puzzle that would be valuable to Cisco. Of particular interest should be platform development tools, data aggregation tools and smart technology around video security/surveillance.
- Channel partner enablement – Cisco’s channel is arguably the finest in penetrating the enterprise IT department. However, the purchase process for IoT solutions involves both IT and operations technology (OT) departments. As such, Cisco will need to empower, train and certify its channel to better make linkages between IT and OT in order to drive more IoT deployments.
- Industry solution development – Cisco’s marketing machine is masterful at pulling together cogent industry solutions and the market messaging to accompany them. This will be a key focus in 2014 for Cisco as it pulls together core Cisco solutions and recent acquisitions to create industry and application-specific IoT stories. We expect Cisco will highlight some of its enterprise customers that have leveraged Cisco solutions in the development of IoT applications. The idea of IoT reference architectures is long overdue and Cisco has great experience in the development of these sorts of tools.
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