On Tuesday at the Cisco Live show, Cisco unveiled its latest collaboration device. The new Cisco device called the Cius (pronounced see-us and rhymes with Zeus) is a tablet that can dock into a base station and can act as video phone. When undocked the device operates as a tablet computer that can be carried around and shared between workers. From the demo itself, the details were relatively scarce but here’s what I've gathered and its implications to Cisco.
The device itself is actually a pretty cool looking tablet. It seems to be fairly slim and would make a great portable communications device for hospitals, field workers, teachers, etc and puts the Cisco logo in front of many people that do not know who Cisco is. To me, this device is the first real sign that Cisco is ready to start building more consumer or realistically for Cisco, prosumer devices that can actually raise Cisco's overall brand awareness (which has been an ongoing goal for the company). Products like the Linksys routers and Scientific Atlanta set top boxes don’t do that. Cisco's had some attempts before (like their "iphone" I blogged about earlier ) that were less than successful, but this device may actually be the start of many other devices Cisco hits the market with.
From what I understand, the tablet isn't really meant to be a replacement for a laptop or an iPad type of tablet. It's a communications-centric tablet that can provide an easy interface into vertically specific applications (they showed an attendance application for teachers in the demos), make videoconferencing portable and create a new way for people to interact with one another. I see the main use of the Cius being centered on visual communications and not productivity applications like word processing and spreadsheets. If that's the case, the device will be geared towards campus type workers that need quick access to information. A nurse, teacher, doctor, field worker, etc are all great targets for this. Traditional corporate workers probably won’t be a main focus as this device would augmentative to a laptop, not a replacement for one. I would expect initial sales of this device to be targeted at specific verticals like healthcare and education to build up the installed base.
The device is powered by the Android operating system. In my mind this was a huge part of the announcement and again, is a small indicator that changes are in the works there. If this had been the Cisco of the few years ago would the company have chosen to build its own interface? Maybe--in fact likely, knowing its history. But I think Cisco realizes that much of the stuff it makes is geared to the IT pro who has a whole different level of technical proficiency so the overcomplicated interfaces didn’t matter as much. Android is a key to the success of Cius and I'd like to see Cisco do this more. The likelihood of developers building applications for an Android-based Cisco device is much higher than developers creating applications for a Cisco operating system. If Cisco had gone down this path for the interface for its IP phones might we have a bunch of applications that run on Cisco IP phones? I don't think we'd have an appstore full of them, but I'm sure we would have more than we do now.
The other area that this could have a significant impact for Cisco is helping Cisco build out a developer environment. Cisco currently has many, many developer initiatives underway. AXP, MSE, WebEx Connect, IOS Developer programs, etc that all roll up into a mythical Cisco Developer Network (CDN). Cisco has been trying to build this developer community for almost a decade now and to say the company has had a lack of success is an understatement. Part of the problem is Cisco itself. The way it deals with developers, the cost of testing, the inconsistencies across programs, etc have frustrated the developers that they work with. The other reason they’ve struggled with building out a broader developer ecosystem is demand. Most developers or corporate workers don’t really understand the concept of integrating communications into business process and applications and the Cius could help tremendously in that regard.
Android coupled with the cool new devices can be used to create the initial attraction to the developers and then IF Cisco has their act together on the CDN side, the company should be able to attract those developers to working with Cisco more broadly. Cisco spokespeople have told me that CDN is finally close to being ready to go but I've heard that before. I'm maintaining healthy skepticism here, but Cius does give them a better chance.
One of the questions that came up regarding Cius is pricing. There was no price released but I was told the price would be under $1,000. Considering that their high end IP phones are already in that range, this didn’t seem to be all that expensive for what you’re getting.
The last note on Cius is around connectivity. Cisco didn't announce a network operator partner with this but did say the device was WiFi, 3G and 4G capable. Currently Sprint is the only cellular operator (domestically) that really markets 4G and Sprint is a great partner of Cisco's so I can see Sprint being a likely partner. Additionally, the target audience of the Cius is transient campus workers, which is also a target audience for Sprint's push-to-talk capabilities.
Overall, I like the device. In fact, it's got more change-the-Internet capabilities than CRS-3 (no offence to the CRS-3 people) and I'm looking forward to seeing them in production next year!
