Cisco offers to lend cities enough cash to buy its IoT gear

Cisco Capital has teamed up with a bunch of other sources of cash to launch the City Financing Acceleration Program.

The apparent purpose of this program is to front up the cash to local authorities keen to become Smart Cities. Apparently smartening an entire city’s worth of infrastructure involves fairly hefty capital outlay and that’s putting some cash-strapped councils off taking the plunge. So Cisco has decided to go down the financing route to kick-start the market.

“Funding is a major stumbling block for municipalities beginning their smart city transformation,” said Anil Menon, Global President of Cisco’s Smart+Connected Communities. “With our partners, Cisco will bring the capital and expertise it takes to make smart city projects a reality. Digital Alpha, APG, and Whitehelm Capital bring a fresh perspective on investment in an area that has previously been perceived as too new and, therefore, too difficult to finance.”

In other news Cisco renamed its Smart+Connected Digital Platform to Cisco Kinetic for Cities, in reference to its general IoT platform recently. On top of that is has added additional tools to support public safety, including Cisco Spark Collaboration stuff. Lastly Cisco is using the town of Cary, North Carolina as a ‘living lab’ to showcase all this smart city cleverness.