Cisco’s Wireless Android Tablet, Cius, Puts Enterprise Collaboration On the Glass
Think of the Cisco Cius (pronounced “see us”) as a wireless tablet that serves as a “player” for the numerous services in Cisco’s Collaboration Suite, as well as a target for a large community of Android developers. Its 7″ diagonal, high-resolution screen is slightly dwarfed by Apple’s iPad (which is a bit more than 9″ diagonal). But it certainly has enough real estate to support high-definition images from meetings (through Telepresence or WebEx) or to render “virtual desktops” that put an employee’s regularly-used productivity, collaboration and communications apps or tools directly “on the glass.”
Because it serves as a virtual desktop, it brings Cisco’s Quad, as well as Show and Share into the mix. Quad is a highly flexible user interface that serves as a repository for all the widgets, gadgets, applets or feeds that can be packed into a personal portal. Cisco Show and Share is positioned as a “social video community” platform which, as the name implies, provides a mechanism for employees to share videos to support the projects that they are working on with a broader team.
Cisco calls Cius an “enterprise tablet”, which differentiates it from the Apple iPad (while taking advantage of many of the technical attributes that are iPad-like). For instance, the ability to access an enterprise’s secure VPN (virtual private network) is baked in at the factory. Many of the features support quick and seamless transitions from the Cius’s “virtual desktop” to an employees physical desktop in support of mobile employees.
From a competitive standpoint, it is a nice, pre-emptive strike by Cisco against not just Apple, but any incursions by makers of Windows boxes, like Dell or Lenovo, but especially HP. Cisco is also making a bold appeal to the Android developer community by inviting them into the Cisco Developer Network (CDN).
CDN may not rival the iTunes AppStore, but building apps that conform to API’s that can be dropped into Quad and displayed on the Cius out in the wild should be a provocative challenge to Web app developers around the world.
Addendum: Cisco told the trade press that the device will be generally available in “early 2011″. It will be equipped with both front-facing and rear-facing cameras. It will connect with peripherals wirelessly through Bluetooth (in addition to WiFi) and physically through USB ports. Finally, the targeted street price is “less than $1,000.
Greg Sterling has an interesting angle on the competitive impact Cius may have on Rim’s plans to introduce a tablet here.
Wow. I think that’s seriously impressive. The question I might have is, is this more of an example of “top down push” thinking, or “bottom up pull thinking”, by which I mean, how exactly does Cisco encourage developers to develop for this Cius/ Android versus how much of this will depend on push through existing vendor relationships? Another miscreant thought is if Nokia also go towards an Android flavour, which they will, will Nokia and Cisco be able to buddy up against Apple and MSFT?
Hi Paul:
You raise two really good points. In terms of encouraging “develpers to develop for Cius/Android”, Cisco is demonstrating with “Quad” that it has created a repository for all sorts of pre-made widgets, gadgets and apps. So the Android development doesn’t have to be specifically for Cisco… it can be something that the Cius user drags into his or her UI from some repository (either one blessed by the enterprise IT dept. or Cisco I suppose). That’s the nature of RC.
As for the catalytic dimensions of the CiscoPlusAndroid superpower, as I noted, Greg Sterling has already observed that Rim’s plan for a tablet may be the first casualty. The prospects of Cisco working with Nokia is tantalizing for both companies in efforts to both the a public cloud and private cloud elements of an application or service delivery platform. Their combination would have the virtuous result of limiting “platform fragmentation” to a certain extent.