New innovations for more connected devices, performance, and power at the IoT edge

In recent months organizations across industries have been and continue to re-evaluate their business resiliency, preparedness for remote operations, agility to handle changes in production, supply chains, and like Cisco WebEx – explosive demand. Businesses are looking beyond the current situation to prepare for any future shocks. One thing is clear, having a secure, always-on digital enterprise is foundational to business resiliency and continuity.

For example, if you are an energy company connecting remote assets such as substations, you need to gain the intelligence needed to make distribution automation projects successful. Cities are going “smart” connecting everything from intersections to improve pedestrian safety, pipelines to detect water leaks, and providing real-time parking data so citizens are not wasting time looking for a spot, as the city of Caldas da Rainha in Portugal did. Ultimately, organizations must be prepared with a secure, reliable communication infrastructure which is ready to handle edge processing requirements. IT will become even more important to help get businesses ready for this new world.

Today, Cisco IoT is announcing three new innovations to securely connect and scale your remote operations bringing real-time and bandwidth heavy IoT applications to fruition – anywhere – with the security and simplicity to scale with existing IT capabilities.

Higher performance, power and cybersecurity at the IoT edge

Adding on to our robust Industrial Ethernet (IE) switching portfolio, we are excited to announce new 10 Gigabit Cisco Catalyst IE3300 Rugged Series Switches. These switches extend the benefits of intent-based networking to the IoT edge to help secure, automate and manage your deployments at scale, whether that’s connecting video cameras on roadways, improving pedestrian safety in intersections, or monitoring quality on the plant floor. The new 10G uplinks and 2.5 Gbps downlinks allow organizations to create better user experiences via Wi-Fi 6 or 802.11ac Wave 2 applications. The new switch has 90W power over ethernet (PoE) ports to connect more devices. With this power and speed, you can connect more than 100 4K cameras in a ring topology.

With cybersecurity being top of mind for IT and operational users alike, the new switches support Cisco’s IoT security architecture including Cisco Cyber Vision, providing the visibility, operational insights, and protection against cybersecurity threats in operational environments. These new switch capabilities will allow organizations to transform their network cost effectively – without replacing their cabling infrastructure or installing new electrical circuits to power devices.

For example, Quanergy, a Cisco partner that provides Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors is already seeing opportunities for the new switches for processing LiDAR sensor data.

“In smart city deployments, it is necessary to aggregate and process data from multiple LiDAR sensors installed at intersections and roadways to create business intelligence for traffic management. The 10G capability of the Cisco Catalyst IE3300 Rugged Series Switches will provide higher bandwidth switching capacity and scalability needed to better assist with processing data from Quanergy’s LiDAR sensors for these large-scale city-wide deployments, ultimately helping cities gain insights of their data in real-time.”
—Enzo Signore, CMO, Quanergy.

We’ll be sharing more on these new switches and their capabilities next week at digital Cisco Live.

Reliable communications for critical infrastructure and remote assets

Today, we are also excited to announce that our IR1101 Integrated Services Router can now enable critical infrastructure and first responders with secure, reliable and uninterrupted connectivity so that they can access information over a dedicated LTE band. We are finalizing FirstNet certification, for cities, roadways and public sector customers to have a dedicated network for any emergency in the future.

We are announcing two new LTE modules for investment protection and flexibility of the IR1101 at the IoT Edge. The new Cisco LTE module supports Category 18, Private-LTE and CBRS giving you high performance and the new Cisco LTE Category 4 module. Both provide an ultra-reliable connection to the public safety spectrum. The new modules combined with the IR1101 router can also enable organizations with remote and distributed environments, including cities, utilities, and oil & gas so they can support twice the amount of data. This additional capacity allows organizations to use the LTE network to extend their wireless access network (WAN) anywhere – while also allowing them to have the speed and capacity to support bandwidth heavy, real-time applications where they need them.

Stay tuned for more on this next week at digital Cisco Live!

Resilient wireless backhaul for on-the-move assets

Remote and autonomous operations are even more important for ports, mines, plants, and transportation systems with the focus on business resiliency. With the recent announcement of our intent to acquire Fluidmesh, we look forward to being able to provide reliable wireless communication to the most challenging environments, whether that is a high-speed train traveling at 300Km/h, or large dense areas that face signal impedance such as shipping ports, mines and cities.

During our Cisco Live event, we’ll be speaking more to the future opportunities around Fluidmesh and how Fluidmesh technology will further strengthen the Cisco IoT portfolio.

While every organization, partner, and executive are evaluating major changes in their businesses (and personal life), one thing is clear: secure, robust communication networks will be critical to improved uptime and business resiliency plans moving forward. Cisco IoT is continuing the investments to help you prepare, and these solutions are a way to help you on your digital journey and establish resiliency by connecting what matters most to your business.

I can’t emphasize enough what an important time it is for Cisco IoT. Connecting things sees no boundaries and the demand will increase, so we want to continue to offer the right products and services that make that a reality. Join us next week on June 2 and 3 to learn more about these new product announcement updates.

We look forward to having you tune in to our first-ever fully digital Cisco Live event. See you there!