Cisco invests $30m in IoT centre in Barcelona

Networking giant Cisco on Wednesday announced plans to open an Internet of Things innovation centre in the Spanish city of Barcelona. From 2015 to 2020, Cisco intends to invest close to $30m in the facilities’ restoration, innovation lab, IT equipment, and talent acquisition primarily in engineering, application development and research.

The Global IoE (Internet of Everything) Innovation Center in Barcelona will provide a platform for research, technological development and new market opportunities related to smart cities and will be housed in a 1,720 SQM campus located at Ca l’Alier, a 19th century heritage building at the core of the 22@Barcelona district.

Opening in summer 2016, the campus will be one of five Cisco sites focused on IoE and its market opportunities around the globe, including the current centres in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Songdo (South Korea) and two more that are under development in Germany and Canada.

They are tasked with designing urban services and solutions for cities, such as mart parking, smart lighting, location-based analytics, energy management, safety and security and cloud exchange.

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Cisco estimates the Internet of Everything, the next phase of the internet´s development, carries a $19tn global value creation opportunity in increased revenue, decreased costs, business process improvement and innovative urban services creation by 2022.

Anil Menon, president Smart+Connected Communities and Cisco deputy chief globalization officer, said: “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. For instance, as urban services become connected within cities, unprecedented economic opportunities will follow –leading to a new globalized urban services industry. By leveraging Internet-of-Everything approaches, this global marketplace unveils great opportunity for innovation – new ways to share information, to extend learning, to distribute expertise and resources, to accommodate need and address challenges.”