While the number of businesses investing in IoT across all markets continues to grow, recent research shows that 60 percent of IoT initiatives stall at the proof-of-concept (POC) stage. This highlights that companies today are still struggling with the key challenges of IoT, including the need for more flexibility, greater security, and the ability to address new use cases. Cisco Jasper has been partnering with service providers to help its customer base, which has grown from 3,500 to 11,000 enterprises in the past year alone, to overcome these challenges and accelerate their IoT success. To continue to meet the exponential demand for IoT solutions, and in keeping with Cisco's dedication to helping customers get from paper to successful IoT deployment more quickly, today Cisco Jasper introduced a new expanded model to bring the benefits of its IoT connectivity platform – Control Center – to a broader audience. Control Center 7.0 addresses business' needs for greater flexibility with a new multi-tiered IoT platform that gives companies various options to meet their specific needs, regardless of which stage of IoT implementation they are in. This new platform is also paired with a new set of Premium Services that address previously unmet needs in the industry related to IoT monetization and security. "We first introduced our Control Center IoT connectivity management platform to the market over 10 years ago, and since then it has become the largest IoT platform with over 43M devices being managed today, and more than 1.5M new devices being added per month," said Jahangir Mohammed, GM of IoT at Cisco. "What we've learned from enabling IoT success for our 11K customers is that companies have different needs at different stages of their IoT journey. So today we're introducing the biggest evolution of our Control Center IoT platform ever, providing a flexible model and new Premium Services that help meet the needs of customers at any phase." With Control Center 7.0, Cisco Jasper is introducing a unique approach to IoT solutions unmatched in the industry, giving customers and service provider partners the flexibility to select and customize the capabilities and services that are right for their deployment, while also providing an easy path for growth as their IoT businesses scale. Control Center 7.0 provides this flexibility by being the first IoT platform to offer: Advanced Capabilities: A new tier of the platform – Control Center Advanced – caters to customers with more sophisticated deployments that need greater capabilities. Premium Services: The introduction of our first two Premium Services, compatible with Control Center, enables customers to solve for previously unmet IoT business needs. The Threat Protection & Smart Security (TPSS) service provides an IoT-specific solution to protect against malware and phishing attacks, and is built on Cisco Umbrella. The first applications of TPSS will be in the Connected Car industry. The second service, Traffic Segmentation, provides a new solution to support different types of revenue generation models. Cisco Jasper service providers can customize Premium Services to meet their customers' specific needs. LPWAN Support: Control Center 7.0 extends the platform's capabilities – including the platform's global reach and scale via support for cellular networks – to low power devices via support for multiple LPWAN technologies, including NB-IoT and LTE-M. AT&T, a Cisco Jasper service provider partner, is integrating these additional capabilities to meet IoT needs for a broad range of industries. The platform will be called AT&T Control Center Advanced, and will be paired with AT&T Premium Services. "We work with companies of every size and across every industry. No two companies are in the same stage when it comes to their IoT initiatives," said Chris Penrose, President, IoT Solutions, AT&T. "Control Center Advanced will enable us to meet our customers' needs no matter where they are in their IoT implementation – from initial deployment to scaling to millions of devices. Our collaboration with Cisco Jasper helps us put our customers in charge of their IoT solutions worldwide with additional security features, analytics and automation rules to increase their ROI." Control Center 7.0 is the first version of the IoT platform to integrate multiple Cisco technologies, delivering on the promise made at the time of Jasper's acquisition to combine the power of Cisco's portfolio with the world's leading IoT connectivity management platform. As a result, Control Center 7.0 solves the biggest challenges companies currently face in IoT with: Multi-layer Security: Expanding upon Control Center's existing security capabilities, users now get multi-layered security controls including closed user groups, two-factor authentication, whitelisting capabilities and more to identify and solve known issues. Collaboration: Integration with Cisco Spark gives users the ability to easily collaborate on issues with connected devices, enabling them to lower resolution time and manage costs. Enhanced Analytics: New reports on historical trends of device behavior and usage enable users to take action on issues that impact performance, costs and security. Support for Low Power Devices: Control Center 7.0 is the first commercially available IoT platform that supports the management of IoT devices across cellular, NB-IoT and LTE-M networks to accommodate a wide range of use cases. "When we acquired Jasper, we made a promise to the industry that Cisco and Jasper would be more than the sum of our separate parts – that we would create something better together," said Rowan Trollope, SVP and GM of IoT and Applications at Cisco. "This is the realization of that promise. And what we've built in the past year has surpassed even our lofty expectations." With Control Center 7.0, Cisco Jasper has created a single, integrated solution to address the needs of both Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) professionals. Previously, Control Center – which automates and manages connectivity of devices on cellular networks globally – was a standalone offering. Today, Control Center 7.0 is yet another proof point of Cisco's leading innovation in IoT solutions, and is now compatible with Cisco's broader IoT Operations Platform, which integrates Connection Management, Data Delivery and Fog Computing for a complete end-to-end solution. And this complements the Cisco DNA offerings, which are delivering the next generation of networks to provide new levels of security, analytics and automation to enable exciting new IoT, cloud and mobile experiences. As a result, customers in any industry can now manage IoT from the edge to the cloud.— SG
