Cisco is collaborating with Barcelona City Council to open a Cisco Global IoE Innovation Center in Barcelona, a platform for research, technological development and identification of new market opportunities related to the Internet of Everything (IoE) for smart cities.
Cisco's IoT term refers to similar but a larger concept of Internet of Things (IoT). ABI Research, a leading research firm explains IoE as follows -"The Internet of Everything (IoE) should be understood as the next evolutionary stage of the Internet of Things (IoT) – that is, a technology concept that sees previously unconnected objects and processes being converged with the ones that are digital-first by their nature."
Cisco intends to invest close to $30 million for the center which will be located at Ca l'Alier, a 19th century heritage building at the core of the 22@Barcelona district, as part of the new Smart City Campus.
The center that is scheduled for opening in summer 2016 will be used to design new services and solutions for cities that are in the early stages of developing urban services (smart parking, smart lighting, location-based analytics, etc.), energy management, safety and security and cloud exchange.
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- The campus will be one of five Cisco sites focused on IoE, including the current centres in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Songdo (South Korea) and two more that are under development in Germany and Canada.
"Barcelona has become a worldwide reference smart city. It's the Mobile Worldwide Capital and in 2014 has been appointed as the Innovation European Capital. Both the new Center of Innovation located in the Smart City Campus and the strong Cisco commitment with our city, will help us to reinforce our bet on a new model of economical growth based on technology, urban innovation and advanced services, improving the wellness and the quality of people life."
- Xavier Trías, Barcelona City Mayor
"Global IoE innovation centers -like the one just announced for Barcelona- will support customers, partners, start-ups, governments, research bodies and academia. These centers represent powerful hubs capable of galvanizing innovative thinking into influential new strategies for defining and building the next iteration of our cities and of our world.
- Anil Menon, President Smart+Connected Communities and Cisco deputy chief globalization officer
