Cisco Introduces the Cius

Tags: cisco, cius, mobility, tablets

On Thursday July 21, Cisco held an analyst event to provide more information on their new tablet, the Cius. The tablet is Cisco's entry into the rapidly growing tablet market. It is based on the Android operating system and has been designed to work with Cisco wireless LAN infrastructure. The table will be released on July 31st and is expected to retail for approximately 750USD. Finally, the device will not be available through traditional consumer retailers as the device has been designed for commercial enterprises.

With the introduction of this device,  Cisco is not trying to design and develop a consumer tablet to rival the Galaxy Tab, Motorola Xoom or the iPAD. Rather they are trying to pursue the enterprise market. Over the long term, I believe that while the consumer tablets have their place, there is also plenty of space in the market for a dedicated business tablet. Designing the device to work within the corporate infrastructure can help to address some of the IT manager's traditional concerns, namely security and interoperability with existing solutions. I addition to the introduction of the tablet, Cisco provided more information on the introduction of the AppHQ, the Cisco created app store that provides IT managers the ability to control the apps deployed on this tablet.

IDC believes that the initial use cases for this device will be more around unified communications. Most early adopters will be using the tablet to join WebEx meetings, Telepresence sessions, or other communications needs. Further IDC believes that it will be used for organizations that need to deploy a mobile solution, but do not have the time or desire to have to integrate a new platform with existing communications infrastructure. Finally, IDC would recommend that end users that need an enterprise grade solution for their mobile employees, but do not want to embrace the bring your own device model, investigate the Cisco solution as it may provide the needed security and IT control that these users desire while satisfying the business needs.

Another acquisition in the social media/analysis market

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On July 6th Twitter announced that they would purchase analytics startup BlackType. BlackType is a small San Francisco-based startup that helps organizations measure the impact of their social media activaties. While there are currently limited resources available on the extent of BlackType's organization and the financial terms of the deal have not been announced, IDC finds this interesting as it is the second instance of this type of merger we have seen in a short period. The first of these was the acquisition of Radian6 by Saleforce.com which was announced earlier this year.  

At the beginning of this year, IDC predicted the integration of social media and analytics would become a high priority for IT vendors. With the rapid growth of social media platforms, most enterprises are have embraced this form of communication from an outbound marketing perspective. There are few organizations that do not have a corporate Twitter account. However, using social media for outbound marketing represents only a small portion of the power of social media. Most organizations now realize that they need to monitor the conversations that are not started or controlled by their marketing departments. The problem is that traditional IT systems have not been designed to address these needs.

As a result, several startups have begun to develop technology to monitor and analyze social media. As these organizations begin to mature, they will increasingly be the target of acquisition by larger SW vendors that are looking to incorporate this technology into their CRM or other enterprise applications. IDC expects that in the next few years, this type of social media analysis will move from a standalone application to an integrated part of larger systems.

From an AP enterprise perspective, IDC believes that organizations need to understand the roadmaps of the major SW providers. In general, the amount of legacy SW installed in AP is lower than in other regions. As a result, a greater portion of AP enterprises have more choices when it comes to implementing enterprise applications. Since social media is expected to increase in importance, IDC believes that Asian enterprises will be in a better position to implement solutions that can address the monitoring and analysis of social media. In many cases, IDC believes that this will take the form of deploying cloud-based tools as these tools can be deployed and updated faster than traditional on-premises applications, and this will be particularly valuable in the fast moving space of social media.