The Cisco® Home Energy Management Solution features a Home Energy Controller along with Cisco Energy Management Services that, when provided by utilities to their customers, are designed to help consumers securely and reliably gain insight into, and easier control over, their energy use

• Cisco's believes that networking technology can change how the world manages its energy and environmental challenges.  Cisco's vision is to enable an end-to-end, open standards-based, communications platform that supports new models of energy management.  By working with utility customers and an ecosystem of partners, Cisco hopes to help create an energy infrastructure for the 21st century that brings about economic as well as environmental benefits.

• As part of this vision, Cisco is announcing new demand-management tools that are a critical part of Cisco's Connected Grid offerings designed to address energy concerns and to help utilities more reliably and efficiently deliver power from generation to businesses and homes.

Solutions for the Home

• The Cisco Home Energy Management Solution for utilities features the Home Energy Controller (CGH-100), a countertop display that helps the consumer make more informed choices, as well as set policies and schedules for energy use, based on real-time household, historic and individual appliance consumption.

• Through the Home Energy Controller's LCD touch screen, the consumer has  insight into and control over peripheral devices that communicate with the HEC, such as thermostats, intelligent sockets and, ultimately, smart appliances like refrigerators and water heaters.

• The Home Energy Controller coordinates the variety of networks in the home and supports associated networking protocols, such as ZigBee, Wi-Fi and Encoder Receiver Technology (ERT).

• With the Cisco Home Energy Management Solution, utilities will be able to extend the benefits of their Smart Meter deployments by providing home owners with more detailed energy control and management, down to the appliance level.  Customers and utilities can coordinate on new pricing and demand-side management services, enabling home automation for energy management.

• Cisco is also announcing hosted Energy Management Services, which utilities can use to manage data from thousands of homes while integrating with their back-end applications.  These complement Cisco's existing service offerings to help utilities plan, build and run a converged communications infrastructure for automating the Connected Grid.

• The Cisco Home Energy Management Solution will be deployed by innovative utility customers such as Duke Energy, with which Cisco has a strategic collaboration to advance Smart Grid technology.

• Studies show that technology can promote better energy management by consumers.  IDC found that customers reduce overall energy use by 4 to 15 percent when they receive real-time feedback on power consumption. Also, according to a study by Zogby International, 74 percent of Americans are likely to change their energy use if they are given the technology solutions to do so.

• The Home Energy Controller is designed as a global solution but will be first available in North America beginning this summer.  It is part of Cisco's new Connected Grid portfolio, an end-to-end approach to the smart grid, within which substation automation technologies were announced in May to help utilities better manage electricity transmission and distribution. 

An interesting article published in connectedplanedonline.com by Rich Karpinski

Cisco is continuing down the path toward a major consumer products launch. Karpinski suggests five guesses what Cisco is up to:

1. Better looking, more functional consumer routers and Wi-Fi boxes. A
2. Telepresence for the home.
3. Remote energy automation solution.
4. A home automation uber remote control.
5. An over-the-top video box.

Read the complete article.

Will consumer-focused videoconferencing from the desktop and perhaps even more intriguingly via mobile devices really kick of? In recent days and weeks, Google purchased GIPS, in part for its HD voice codecs but also its videoconferencing technology, which could get added to the Android platform; Skype started rolling out broader support for group video calls; and Cisco dropped hints about a $500 home telepresence setup for consumers.

Guaranteeing the necessary bandwidth and dealing with latency issues makes mobile and consumer videoconferencing a major telco opportunity, not an over-the-top threat. Just as mobile VoIP hasn’t really taken off as a purely OTT sensation, look for the same dynamic — only to an even greater extreme — to play out with video communications. That’s in part why the Verizon/Skype partnership on mobile VoIP is so interesting (and why Skype is making such a big bet on the partnership). By setting up dedicated signaling and session connections to support mobile Skype, Verizon can help deliver better voice service while at the same time instantly tapping into Skype’s major global user base.

Reserving and guaranteeing real-time session streams for video communications will be even more important, whether it be video delivered from a mobile device over a mobile data network or a home-based telepresence service such as Cisco is proposing. Think $500 is a bit much just to get that Cisco telepresence device into your home? Imagine how overpriced it will appear if the real-time streaming video services delivered to it in a pure OTT fashion are marred by jitter and delay. Look for so-called over-the-top video players to cut deals with service providers to take advantage of next-generation QOS guarantees and protocols like real-time transport protocol supported in the network to make videoconferencing into a service actually worth paying for.

Cisco today announced its intent to acquire privately held MOTO Development Group, a design consulting firm that develops products and product strategies for the consumer industry.  Based in San Francisco, MOTO's talent base will complement Cisco's and enable Cisco to rapidly enhance its consumer product development road map. 

MOTO brings to Cisco an accomplished team of more than 35 consultants with a proven track record in the consumer product industry.  The MOTO team has been instrumental in the development of innovative products from startups to Fortune 500 companies, including Cisco's industry-leading Flip video product family. MOTO's multidisciplinary team drives innovation across the product life cycle to create engaging products and consumer experiences.

MOTO's philosophy directly aligns with Cisco's consumer strategy to use devices, software and the network to deliver transformational product experiences that delight consumers. As the consumer market evolves, Cisco will continue to focus on helping people live a connected life that is more personal, more social and more visual.  Like the acquisition of Pure Digital in 2009, the acquisition of MOTO is another step toward embedding consumer design and ease of use into Cisco products for the consumer market.

Financial terms of the transaction are undisclosed.  The acquisition is subject to various standard closing conditions and is expected to be complete in the fourth quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2010.  Upon the closing of the acquisition, MOTO employees will become part of the Cisco Consumer Products team led by Kaplan.

Read in telecoms.com

IP and core network equipment vendor Cisco has pulled the plug on its WiMAX base station operation, further highlighting the ill health of the sector.

Cisco has been stepping up its game in the telecoms sector ahead of the shift to all IP next generation networks, since it missed the boat during the rollout of 3G. The US company has a presence in both the WiMAX and LTE sectors but more as a provider of packet core networking equipment as well as edge technologies like wifi and femtocells.

Well, make that only as a provider of core and edge infrastructure. “After careful review of our mobility strategy and investments, we have decided to discontinue designing and building new WiMAX base stations,” a company spokesman said this week.

Read the complete article.

The VideoStream technology will make Cisco’s WLAN solutions media-ready and enable high-definition video to be scaled through Wi-Fi networks. This includes a set of features to provide improved resource control, support for scalable multicasting and prioritisation of different types of video stream, which will allow customers to define what videos should have reserved resources across the networks. In this way a CEO’s corporate message, for example, can be given priority over training videos. This is nice to have, but is still just that. However, the potential is broad and we expect video collaboration and related traffic contention to play its role in mobility at some stage.

This announcement is part of a comprehensive collaboration strategy to help Cisco to enable new possibilities for enterprises and create increasing demand for bandwidth-hungry collaboration services. It’s not a surprise that Cisco is pushing to have everything video-enabled to accelerate the refresh of enterprises’ network infrastructure, which is still its core business. Therefore, the complete proposition is backed by Cisco Advanced Services, and includes network planning, design, deployment and support. In our view these services and the network upgrades are where the major revenue streams will come from.

Some cordless applications, but mobility is still niche
Cisco’s media-ready WLAN strategy is based on three pillars: bandwidth, scale and quality. The new VideoStream technology will ensure Wi-Fi networks are scalable and will provide quality of service to support end-to-end high-definition video. Meanwhile, its 802.11n solution is well timed as it provides the higher bandwidth required.

However, we expect most of the initial applications to provide premise-based mobility rather than supporting users on the move. The 802.11n standard requires more power than the 802.11g. This, combined with the high processing capacity required for HD video, will increase the strain on the batteries of dual-mode smartphones, which are already struggling to cope with existing Wi-Fi requirements. As a result, most early applications will be based on laptops, cordless desk phones and video signage, rather than on handsets.

In general, mobile video hasn't taken off. Video consumption on mobiles over 3G networks is considerably lower than initially envisaged, and we don’t yet see enough compelling benefits of video for dual-mode phone users at enterprises to change the story for Wi-Fi networks. In addition, to take video beyond the enterprise Cisco will need to integrate this with its FMC solutions and rely more on its telco partners.

Mobile video is likely to be restricted to more niche applications, such as applications for education and training. Current examples include the provision of visual translation of lectures for deaf students, but we are convinced that a few more will follow.

Investment in enterprise telephony remained restricted in EMEA in Q3 2009, with call control line shipments down 17.5% compared with the same period in 2008. The rate of contraction, however, is slowing when compared with previous quarters. Volume declined 21.5% in Q1, while Q2 was down 18.6%. In total, 4.8 million lines were shipped in the quarter, a 4.4% sequential increase. IP line penetration increased to 40%, up from 35% one year earlier, as businesses continued to replace aging TDM infrastructure and expand trial projects. Aggressive cash-back, fixed price, minimum spend and competitor trade-in promotions, as well as 0% financing offers have helped prevent greater reductions in shipments during 2009.

Alcatel-Lucent, Siemens and Aastra continue to lead in EMEA, with Cisco gaining ground. ‘Alcatel-Lucent has been a stable performer in the region over the last eight quarters, overtaking Siemens as the market leader in 2008,’ said Alex Smith, a Research Analyst at Canalys. ‘During the recession, it has managed to maintain its market share, though its Q3 shipments were hit by the holiday season in its core markets, particularly France, Spain and Italy,’ Smith added. Siemens, which is now jointly owned by the Gores Group and Siemens AG, remained the second largest vendor with a market share of 13.5%, though this has steadily eroded over the last two years. Overall, Siemens is continuing to invest in growing its indirect business, but shifting direct accounts to the channel will take time. In September, it announced plans to accelerate this process by selling its direct sales organisations in 27 non-core countries to Netlink, a deal worth €204 million ($308 million), more than the original €175 million ($275 million) the Gores Group paid Siemens AG for its 51% stake in the overall business. Aastra was the third largest vendor in the region, with a market share of 13.0%. During the quarter, Aastra benefited from competitor cash-back trade-in promotions in France, while investment in direct-touch activities helped it improve its German business.

Cisco continued to grow its market share during the recession, primarily driven by gains in Western Europe, particularly in Germany where it has invested heavily in marketing and sales resources. Cisco has not been immune to year-on-year declines. It accounted for 11.6% of total shipments, compared with 11.2% in Q2 and 10.3% in Q3 2008. Its entrance into the server market, and the resulting moves by IBM and HP to expand their own networking, security and UC portfolios through acquisitions and vendor alliances, will present it with some difficult challenges around routes to market in the future. Avaya, which grew its shipments by 4.2% over Q2 with strong sales in the UK, catalysed by the release of IP Office R5, won the auction for the Nortel Enterprise business. The new entity has the potential to emerge as the leading vendor in EMEA, though very rarely do the combined shipments of two companies post-merger equal those of the separate entities pre-merger.

• Cisco's collaboration vision is to enable a sustainable, new level of enterprise productivity, agility and innovation by transforming the way people interact, share knowledge and deliver productive outcomes within and across organizations.
• TelePresence and high-quality video have redefined how users communicate through easy-to-use, immersive, high-quality video experiences and are becoming a larger segment of the broader collaboration market.
• TANDBERG's leading video endpoints and network infrastructure solution will be integrated into Cisco's world-class collaboration architecture. This will enable intercompany and multi-vendor interoperability and ease of use across the full product portfolio -- from desktop to immersive, multi-screen TelePresence. This interoperability will benefit Cisco's customers, but also competitors and partners by accelerating customer interest in video collaboration globally.
• Cisco continues to invest in the European market as a center of innovation across all market segments, and will continue to drive global growth by positioning TANDBERG's Norway operations as a European center of video excellence alongside our Service Provider video team in Diegem, Belgium.
• TANDBERG's 1,500 employees globally, with innovation centers in Norway and the United Kingdom, will be extremely important as Cisco's team continues to drive video innovation and growth.