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The impact of today’s world is driving organizations to turn to IoT not just for efficiencies, but also for resiliency. To adapt and thrive, organizations need data for visibility into their operations in ways they hadn’t perhaps imagined. Across IT and OT, businesses are now challenged to monitor assets and facilities when no one or few people are physically on the ground and in places where employee safety may be at risk.

With smart sensors and monitoring applications, organizations can:

  • Improve employee safety and efficiencies by limiting unnecessary site visits, equipment checks and reducing employee movement throughout facilities;
  • Reduce expenses by identifying and avoiding premature equipment failure;
  • Improve customer satisfaction by reducing unplanned outages and corresponding operational downtime.

That’s exactly why Cisco is excited to announce two new simple-to-deploy sensor solutions to give you the visibility and data you need across your business – from IT network closets to OT and Line of Business environments and everything in between.

  • Meraki MT Sensors – ideal for Meraki network users to monitor indoor IT facilities like network closets
  • Cisco Industrial Asset Vision – a new IoT solution that integrates together new Cisco sensors, an Cisco IoT gateway and a new cloud-based dashboard to monitor OT assets and facilities in outdoor and industrial indoor spaces

Accelerating critical projects with simplicity

Sensors deliver the measurement granularity needed to make the right decisions to improve operations and resiliency. Data like the temperature, humidity, and facility ingress/egress activity, water leaks or the location of assets can impact safety of products, location or an entire business.

Customers have been connecting sensors to our networks for years. But the struggle to get these solutions up and running at scale was daunting. These solutions lacked the integration with the network causing long deployment cycles, complexity at scale, and missed insights. There should be a better way.

Now Cisco Industrial Asset Vision and Meraki MT answer these problems. They are all-in-one, pre-integrated, secure, cloud-managed solutions that include new Cisco sensors, our existing gateways, and a dashboard for operations and system management.

From the sensors to the gateway, Industrial Asset Vision deploys in minutes using a mobile app with QR codes and is built to scale as your business grows. Both have cloud-based management reducing the burden on IT, integration costs across business locations. The operational dashboard provides a single view of the asset or facility health for all associated sensors, across related assets and facilities, and even down to the IoT gateway itself.

Whether you’re in an outdoor/industrial OT environment or a traditional IT environment, our two new solutions are simple, secure, and scalable. From the sensor at the network edge all the way to the cloud-hosted dashboard, Cisco has you covered.

Industrial Asset Vision in Action

We’ve already started seeing positive business outcomes for both our IT and OT customers. Take for example our Waste Management – a leader in garbage collection and disposal, recycling, and dumpster rental.

Cisco Industrial Asset Vision has helped them quickly and safely tackle key operational challenges. Waste Management has massive industrial yards with thousands of large dumpsters – making it very challenging to know the physical locations and repair status to accurately fulfill customer orders. Now with Cisco’s Industrial Asset Vision and its geolocation sensor, Waste Management brings automation to their tracking and reporting capabilities – making their operations more efficient and safer while also raising their customer satisfaction.

“Despite their physical size, we have a lot of pieces of equipment that can be a challenge to keep track of. With Cisco Industrial Asset Vision, we can monitor exactly where our inventory is in our sites and fulfill customer orders faster and more accurately,” said Vu Nguyen, Senior Manager for Corporate Development and Innovation, Waste Management. “The beauty of the all-in-one fully tested and secure solution is its simplicity. Our field engineers can install sensors and gateways in a matter of minutes and almost immediately share data in the cloud-based management dashboard.”

Technology delivering smarter and safer work environments

It’s clear that as the world continues to change, businesses need to be safer and more resilient. Cisco IoT and Meraki are delivering the agility and the intelligence to help organizations quickly adapt their businesses.

Click here for more on Industrial Asset Vision for OT spaces and here for more on Meraki (MT) for IT spaces.

To learn more about Industrial Asset Vision and Meraki (MT), check out the on-demand replay of our digital event: Connect More, See More, Do More, Building Business Resiliency in Your IT and OT Environments.

 



Authors

Vikas Butaney

Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cisco SD-WAN, Multicloud, and Industrial IoT