Cisco detailed plans to invest $30 million (€22 million) in a global innovation centre for the "Internet of Everything" (IoE) that is scheduled to be opened in Barcelona in mid-2016.
The U.S.-based networking giant announced the plans together with Barcelona City Council, and said the investment would cover the period from 2015 to 2020 based on current plans.
The new 1,720-sqm Cisco centre will be located at Ca l'Alier at the core of the "22@Barcelona" district, as part of the new Smart City Campus. The 22@Barcelona project aims to transform 200 hectares of industrial land into an innovative district offering modern spaces for intensive knowledge-based activities.
Cisco already operates IoE innovation centres in Brazil and South Korea, and has two more under development in Germany and Canada.
The Barcelona centre will be used to design new services and solutions for cities that are in the early stages of developing urban services including smart parking, smart lighting, location-based analytics and so on, as well as energy management, safety and security and cloud exchange. It will also serve as a showcase for Cisco's own solutions in the area of "smart" innovation.
Cisco believes that the IoE, the next phase of the Internet's development that is also called the "Internet of Things" or IoT, carries an estimated a $19 trillion global value creation opportunity in increased revenue, decreased costs, business process improvements, and innovative urban services creation by 2022.
IoT and IoE are certainly the big industry buzzwords, as vendors such as Cisco, Ericsson and Huawei, and operators including Vodafone, Orange, Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica stake their claims for leadership in areas ranging from connected cars and smart metering through to "smart cities" and eGovernment.
According to a recent report from IDC, IoT--defined as a network of networks of uniquely identifiable endpoints (or "things") that communicate without human interaction using IP connectivity--is now moving beyond the buzz. The research company estimated that the worldwide market for IoT solutions will grow from $1.9 trillion in 2013 to $7.1 trillion in 2020.
For more:
- see this Cisco release
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