5 Hot IoT Solutions Launched At Cisco Live

Cisco Live 2017

Cisco unveiled a slew of new Internet of Things solutions at Cisco Live in Las Vegas on Tuesday aimed at boosting Cisco Jasper sales.

San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco acquired Jasper Technologies for $1.4 billion in early 2016. Jasper's cloud-based IoT Control Center service platform helps enterprises and service providers launch, manage and monetize IoT services on a global scale.

"Control Center automates the management and monitoring of connectivity of IoT devices," said Theresa Bui Revon, head of product marketing and strategy for Cisco Jasper, in an interview with CRN.

Here are the five new IoT products and services the network leader launched today at Cisco Live.

Control Center 7.0

Dubbed as the world's largest IoT platform, Cisco revealed Control Center 7.0 with a new multi-tier platform that addresses the need for greater flexibility. The new platform has enhanced analytics, improved automation and new security capabilities.

Control Center 7.0, which is mainly sold through service providers, now supports the management of IoT devices across cellular, NB-IoT and LTE-M networks to accommodate a wide range of use cases. The new security features enable customers to get multi-layered security controls including closed user groups, two-factor authentication and white-listing capabilities to identify and solve known issues.

"We're offering a connectivity platform that enables the management of monetization services and IoT connectivity with an open API library, meaning that you can build Control Center into existing ecosystem stacks that are very vertically focused including connected cars, smart city and manufacturing -- and that's where some system integrators might get involved," said Revon.

Threat Protection & Smart Security Service

Separate from the new control center, Cisco revealed two new premiums services now available, including Threat Protection & Smart Security. The security-as-a-service solution provides an IoT-specific solution to protect against malware and phishing attacks. The Threat Protection & Smart Security service will be under Cisco Umbrella, the company's cloud security platform.

"It's very specifically focused for connect car companies and to protect devices that have access to open Internet websites," said Revon.

Traffic Segmentation Service

The second premium service is Traffic Segmentation, which Cisco said supports sophisticated IoT revenue models.

"This helps companies that are monetizing their IoT services," said Revon. "These premium services are offered independent of the Control Center. They will have a lifecycle of their own as they grow."

Control Center Advanced

A brand new tier inside Control Center 7.0 is the Control Center Advanced. These advanced capabilities inside the platform caters to customers with more sophisticated deployments that need greater capabilities including even more advanced security solutions, automation and analytics.

"This advanced tier has a very specific feature function set that cater towards customers that have incredibly complex IoT roll-outs," said Revon. "Maybe their devices roam across different zones or countries as an example, or they have really large IoT roll outs – we're talking 500,000 to 1,000,000 devices."

Control Center 7.0 Integration

Although not a specific product, one of the biggest highlights of Cisco's new control center is its integration with several of the vendor's other key solutions.

Control Center 7.0 has been integrated with Cisco's flagship collaboration product line Spark -- providing customers the ability to collaborate on issues with connected devices to enable lower resolution time and manage costs. The platform has also been integrated into Cisco Umbrella.

The control center is now compatible with Cisco's broader IoT Operations Platform, which integrations fog computing, data delivery and connection management for a complete end-to-end solution, according to Cisco. Revon also said the platform also complements Cisco's Digital Network Architecture (DNA) offerings.