Cisco committed to help build 100 Smart Cities in India: Chuck Robbins

Not just Nagpur in Maharashtra, Cisco is working closely with state governments and its partners to digitally transform 14 cities and plans to connect 100 cities as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Digital India initiative, its CEO, Chuck Robbins, has emphasised.

Responding to an IANS question, Robbins said: "We are engaged with state governments at various levels to digitally transform 14 cities with the help from our partners. I wish to take this number to 100 in the next five-seven years in line with the government's 'Digital India' and 'Make in India' initiatives."

"We are working closely with our partners in India as they have the skills and capabilities to make this happen. This is part of our broader India digital plans," Robbins added during a media interaction at the annual Cisco Partner Summit 2016 here on Tuesday.

The global networking giant which is now focused on making a big foray into Cloud, Internet of Things (IoT) and cyber security, last month launched its manufacturing operations in Pune and announced it would build Nagpur as Smart City with its Next-Gen solutions.

According to industry analysts, there are nearly 23 billion connected devices and the number is expected to double to over 50 billion by 2020 and Cisco is prepared to help governments and enterprises achieve this goal.

To achieve this, providing a secured ecosystem -- from hardware to software -- to the customers is the key.

To meet this challenge, Cisco unveiled Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) for Endpoints at the event -- a technology that combines prevention, detection and response to simplify endpoint security.

Cisco also announced to extend its software licensing programme -- Cisco ONE Software - into advanced security.

"Today, more than 14,000 customers, including 91 per cent of the Fortune 100, have purchased Cisco ONE Software," the company said.

Cisco also announced availability of three new advanced security software suites: Threat Defense for Data Centre, Threat Defense for WAN and Edge and Policy and Threat Defense for Access.

"With a new endpoint security solution, partners have the opportunity to tap into a market that is growing rapidly at 48 per cent per year," said Nirav Sheth, Senior Director, Solutions, Architectures and Engineering, Global Partner Organisation, Cisco.

According to Pankaj Gupta, Senior Director, Enterprise Portfolio Marketing, Cisco, the Indian government and enterprises need security like never before and the new endpoint security solution will provide that.

"With the rising number of security and data breaches, the Indian firms and banks require to adopt extra-layered security. Through the cloud-based approach, AMP for Endpoints gets actionable intelligence into the hands of organisations faster, giving them an edge against today's attackers," Gupta told IANS.

When it comes to planning Smart Cities in India, the challenges are different as healthcare and education come to the fore for Cisco that came to the country in 1995 and currently has over 11,000 employees here.

"It is absolutely amazing to see the technology helping students read better and transforming healthcare in the Indian villages. This is what actually drives Cisco," Robbins added.

(Nishant Arora is attending the event in the US at the invitation of Cisco. He can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in)

--IANS

na/vm