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The new decade has brought in a new normal where the principles that built the Internet of Things (IoT) have been accelerated. Real-time data from physical assets is foundational, remote access is more critical than ever, and automation continues to improve efficiency. At Cisco IoT, we are laser focused on helping our customers achieve that. We help them digitize their operations to achieve business outcomes and improve operational efficiency. To that end, Cisco announced the launch of Edge Intelligence in January 2020 at Cisco Live Europe. And in the last six months, this IoT offering has been validated by our customers through successful field trials. Today, I am extremely proud to announce the orderability of Cisco Edge Intelligence to our global customer base.

For our new readers, here is a quick recap of Cisco Edge Intelligence – it is a plug-and-play IoT software solution tightly integrated with Cisco Edge Gateways. It greatly simplifies IoT data extraction, transformation, and delivery to multi destinations with granular data policies for governance. It is remotely managed and configured using a SaaS (Software as a Service) based web portal. Customers can configure their remote assets across an abundance of locations, filter and send the data to their destination with zero coding within a matter of minutes (yes minutes!)

For advanced customers, it provides a plugin to Microsoft Visual Studio code, where developers can write simple to complex analytics scripts using well-known JavaScript, remotely debug and push the scripts to an almost infinite number of gateways using Cisco’s cloud-based management services.

Over the last six months, Cisco completed early field trials with several customers. Use cases have varied from geographically distributed assets in Oil & Gas (O&G) wells, water distribution facilities, remote vessels/fleets to high-value industrial assets. In each of these pilots, Cisco Edge Intelligence has proven to be highly valuable to our customers, catapulting them from concept to outcome. Given the frequency of IoT projects not getting through their Proof of Concept stage, this success rate is a high point for both our early field trial customers and Cisco.

Port of Rotterdam completes early field trial

One of our early field trial customers, the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, uses Cisco Edge Intelligence to remotely manage their patrol vessels. A patrol vessel is a data mine and generates thousands of data points per second. Its operators need to visualize and analyze that data to help with operations such as predictive maintenance and helping improve emergency response times. The goal was to extract, transform and deliver data to their analytics application. They went from having an architecture discussion with Cisco to implementing Cisco Edge Intelligence and deriving value from data in less than two weeks!

Jouke Dijkstra, the IoT Architect for the Port of Rotterdam summed it up well, “The pilot project with Cisco Edge Intelligence demonstrated viability, proved value in record time unlike anything we have seen before and with much lower budget that we can anticipated.”

As a thought leader and an early pilot customer, we are very excited to share a new case study on Port of Rotterdam’s field trial of Edge Intelligence. Read the full case study here.

Partnering for success

Beyond the early use cases we’ve started with our customers, our partnership strategy with cloud and IoT platform vendors has been a cornerstone for the early success of Edge Intelligence. Our customers have used Edge Intelligence to bring data home to their applications residing on Azure IoT hub, Software AG Cumulocity and in many cases MQTT servers running on various cloud and on-prem infrastructures. Cisco is focused on extending this ecosystem of partners and expanding validated solution that works simply for its customers.

The Cisco Edge Intelligence team is committed to building on this success and help deliver business value to our IoT customers. We are now open for business, and we look forward to learning and helping our customers with their IoT needs. Want to learn more about IoT Edge and Cisco Edge Intelligence? Listen to recently hosted webinar by IDC.



Authors

Anoop Mohan

Director of Product, IoT Edge

Cisco Internet of Things (IoT)