There were tablets aplenty at this year’s CES 2011, but Cisco was making sure it made its presence felt with its Android powered Cius, which it believes stands uniquely apart from all other tablets.
“It’s a purpose-built, mobile collaboration tablet, designed specifically for business,” Tom Puorro, director of Cisco’s IP Communications told RCR. “Cius delivers a completely integrated, contacts-driven, touch-target based collaborative experience,” he continued.
Indeed, boasting support for the full suite of Cisco Unified Communications features — HD video including Interoperability with Cisco TelePresence Solution, Tandberg EX Series and other Cisco Video Endpoints, IM and Presence, Desktop Virtualization as well as interoperability with various email clients – the Cisco Cius certainly means business.
Much of the criticisms leveled at tablets thus far have been based on the observation that users see them as consumption devices rather than productive platforms to create content on, but Cisco believes it has struck a fine balance with Cius.
The firm says it has combined its strengths in the network to support seamless audio and video transitions rom a wired Gigabit Ethernet connection to the WiFi network, allowing Cius to take advantage of the best available network. Meanwhile, 3G and 4G versions mean users can pick and choose when they are remote to their network.
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“Whether employees are in the office, roaming within the campus using 802.11 Wi-Fi, at home, or on the road, Cius enables them to remain productive and secure,” Puorro told RCR. This is ensured by Cius’ support for desktop virtualization clients and the firm’s AnyConnect VPN client for security.
The fact that Cisco has also been able to capitalize by having the open Android platform on its tablet, rather than a proprietary OS like Microsoft Windows, means it is trying to combine the best of both worlds, leveraging a rapidly growing community of developers and applications.
“The flexibility of an open operating system is an important advantage for customers versus tablets running on proprietary operating systems, where such closed technologies may lag behind in new application features,” Puorro noted.
Whether the Cius will be a success or not remains to be seen, and whether business users will plump for Cisco’s offering over the supremely slick and fast BlackBerry PlayBook is uncertain, but one thing is clear, Cisco refuses to remain low profile in what is clearly becoming a very profitable market.