Cisco introduces small M2M gateway for businesses

Cisco Systems introduced a new machine-to-machine gateway that extends the corporate 3G/4G wireless WAN services to devices located away from a company's headquarters.

According to Inbar Lasser-Raab, senior director for marketing for Cisco's ISR product line and Borderless Networks strategy, Cisco's integrated services router (ISR), the Cisco 819 ISR, is putting networking capabilities into devices not normally connected to the Internet, such as ATMs, refrigerators, GPS systems, portable medical devices and vending machines.

An ATM machine, for instance, could sense it's getting low on cash and send a signal to the main office. The system at the main office can then in turn determine which trucks are on the road and signal to the one closest to the ATM to deliver more cash, Lasser-Raab said. The router could enable portable medical services with remote patient monitoring and vending machines with the router can discover and communicate with delivery vehicles.

The router is lighter than Apple's lightest MacBook Air device and smaller in both length and width than the iPad 2 tablet.

For more:
- see this eWeek article

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