Cisco boosts the IoE with an Innovation Center in Barcelona applied to smart cities

Research-focused, technological development and new market opportunities around the Internet of Things applied to smart cities, Cisco's new Global IoE Innovation Center will be located in Barcelona and is expected to open in the second quarter of 2016.

culm and Barcelona City Council will create a Global Innovation Center on IoE with the aim of making it a platform for research, technological development and new market opportunities around the Internet of Things (lnternet of Everithing – IoE) applied to smart cities.

This new Cisco Innovation Center, with 1.720 square meters of surface area, will be located in the historic building Ca l'Alier of the XIX Century, in the heart of the 22@Barcelona district, being part of the new SmartCity Campus of this city.

Based on your current forecasts, Cisco will invest near 30 millions of dollars (more than 22 millions of euros) between 2015 and 2020, including the rehabilitation works of the building (six million euros, which will be assumed jointly with Schneider Electric), the innovation laboratory, technological equipment and the hiring of new workers, mainly engineers, application developers and researchers.

For Jordi Botifoll, Cisco President for Latin America, Senior Vice President ofculm for America and executive sponsor for Barcelona, "ICT, and specifically the IoE, play a decisive role in urban transformation, sustainable economic growth and public services, contributing to improving the quality of life of citizens and strengthening the competitiveness of cities and their ability to attract talent and investment. Barcelona's Global IoE Innovation Centre will help generate new solutions and demonstrate their practical application in areas critical to cities, such as parking management, energy efficiency, safety and security and new communications architectures that will optimize the way cities manage and interact with their citizens in the coming years".

Fifth global IoE hub

The company plans to inaugurate the new IoE Innovation Center during the summer of 2015, becoming one of Cisco's five global centers dedicated to research around IoE and its market opportunities, next to the current ones located in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Songdo (South Korea), and those still under construction in Germany and Canada.

As a pole of global innovation, this new center in Barcelona will provide Cisco with an innovative space to collaborate with customers, Partners, start-ups, Administrations and research and education bodies, which will host two types of activities.

One will be an innovation lab around IoE to design new solutions and services for cities that are starting to create urban services., such as smart parking, smart lighting, location-based analytics, Etc; in addition to energy management, urban protection and security and access through the cloud.

Another activity will be the live demonstration area of Cisco solutions, including the Smart Connected Communities platform and its practical application to improve the quality of life of citizens.

As Anil Menon points out, President of Smart Connected Communities and Deputy General Manager of Globalization at Cisco, "the Global IoE Innovation Centers, like the one we just announced in Barcelona, are powerful nuclei capable of promoting innovative thinking and generating new strategies to define and build a new relationship with our cities and our world. Like this, as urban services are developed in cities, unprecedented economic opportunities will be created. By leveraging strategies around the Internet of Everything, this global market generates a great opportunity for innovation that translates into new ways of sharing information, extend knowledge, distribute experience and resources and respond to challenges and needs".

Barcelona as a benchmark

Cisco's decision to establish an IoE Innovation Center in Barcelona responds to this city's commitment to innovation and its willingness to share these developments with other cities., strengthening itself as a world leader in solutions and services for smart cities. In addition, Barcelona has a strong technology community, academic and research that constitutes a nucleus open to entrepreneurship, as indicated by the company.

Xavier Trias, Mayor of Barcelona City Council, "Barcelona has become a smart city of world reference. It is the Mobile Capital of the World and this 2014 has been distinguished as European Capital of Innovation. The new Innovation Center located on the Smart City Campus, and Cisco's strong commitment to our city, will help us to reinforce the commitment to a new model of economic growth based on technology, urban innovation and advanced services".

Rehabilitation and business collaboration

The goal of this new Cisco Innovation Center is to help companies and administrations understand how to capture value from the Internet of Everything., the new phase of the Internet whose opportunity for value generation is estimated at 14,5 trillions of euros (19 trillions of US dollars) on a global scale up to the year 2023, as a result of cost reduction, income generation, the optimization of business processes and the creation of innovative urban services.

In the historical, and currently in ruins, building of the former factory of Ca l'Alier will also house the innovation center of the French multinational Schneider Electric, that together with Cisco will assume the investment of six million euros for its rehabilitation, which is expected to end in 2016; as well as offices of the municipal foundation Barcelona Institute of Technology for the Habitat (BIT Habitat) and an incubator for tech startups.

In the case of the Schneider Electric Innovation Center, the first of this French multinational dedicated to the development of technology and services for smart cities, the agreement signed is for nine years, with an investment of 750.000 Euros, as Julio Rodríguez has pointed out, Executive Vice President of Operations of this company.

The Deputy Mayor of Urban Habitat of Barcelona City Council, explained that the building will be rehabilitated under sustainable and energy efficiency criteria, preserving the historical heritage without renouncing technological innovation, and that it will have public areas and free access, as well as restricted access areas, with the foresight that it will not only create 160 direct jobs, but it will serve as a business dynamizer.

Other articles on Barcelona City Council, BIT Habitat, culm, IoE, Schneider Electric