Cisco Spaces is a location aware, task management cloud-based application.
What does that mean in plain English? It can track objects and people and display the results on a web-based dashboard that's easy to use.
Factor in the ability to be able to undertake tasks and trigger outcomes and you have a pretty interesting product.
Cisco Spaces has a vast number of use cases, but the vertical that would get the most use is probably clinical - there are a lot of equipment, processes and people to content with in a hospital situation, which means the business ROI in deploying Cisco Spaces is likely to be high.
There's a wealth of use cases outside of those I'll describe below that suit other verticals though, such as Universities, warehouses and hospitality.
Cisco Spaces: What does it do?
The major question to get your head around with Cisco Spaces, is what does it actually do.
The answer is a lot of things and the key point is that with a bunch of vendor applications that it can interconnect to, or work alongside, there's a huge number of productivity use cases.
Not to be confused with Catalyst Center, (which is the network management application), Cisco Spaces while being part of the same family, offers completely different functionality.
Firstly, some quick background on location grade Wi-Fi:
- Hotspot Wi-Fi: Originally Wi-Fi really was deployed as a hotpot sort of technology, enabled laptops to be used away from the desk.
- Increasing AP Density: Over the years this has been upgraded to support Wi-Fi voice, IoT devices, Bring your Own device / Guest access, BioMedical integration and a host of other services.
- Location Awareness: One of the newer ones - using Wi-Fi to essentially triangulate (or trilaterate) to determine the location of a Wi-Fi transmitter.
- Hyperlocation: We've deployed many Wi-Fi installations to location grade, and throw in the use of Cisco Hyperlocation and you've got a location awareness in the region of 1 - 3m.
How does this form part of what Cisco Spaces does? Cisco Spaces makes use of that location information and displays it on a map allowing you to use this data in a variety of ways.
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Cisco Spaces: How to Connect
How you connect Cisco Spaces in your environment is pretty simple. Cisco Spaces can connect to your network in two ways:
- Cisco CMX: If you have Cisco CMX already installed, you can use this to connect to the cloud (and Cisco Spaces)
- Cisco Spaces Connector: If you don't have CMX, or you prefer to connect via a separate means, the Cisco Spaces Connector can provide a simple way to connect with a lightweight VMWare install
Either of the above methods connect you to the Cisco Spaces cloud. Cisco Spaces itself is licenced per Access Point (AP) and accessed via a standard web browser.
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Cisco Spaces Accessibility
With the ability to access via a standard web browser, once configured you have access to Cisco Spaces from anywhere you need - or via any device - in your organisation.
The Cisco Spaces Dashboard if your entry point into the applications you can use. Click on each of the panel icons on the screen below takes you to the applications.
You can update these via the Cisco Spaces marketplace:
There's an app for your phone to make life a little easier too, so you can have this installed as part of your standard corporate device MDM build. Staff can access the various applications that make up Cisco Spaces from the app or via a browser.
This means that nursing staff can be on the ward and access the app to locate an infusion pump while at the bedside, or a visiting patient can call up the wayfinding information to find their way to their appointment.
Let's take a look at some of the applications.
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Cisco Spaces Applications
One of the really powerful aspects of Cisco Spaces is that it's not actually one application
Cisco has a good blog on Cisco Spaces and Indoor IoT Services (I've borrowed a couple of the images below), which is worth a look for some background.
Cisco Spaces has a marketplace.
Like many applications these days where you can plug in third party widgets and applications, Cisco Spaces also offers this.
This is the really valuable business aspect - you can take whatever location systems you have and blend those in to Cisco Spaces and make use of whatever existing location beacons and tags you have, right there inside the Cisco Spaces application.
This means that you can make use of your Cisco Location data and the Cisco Spaces front end and snap in applications.
There's quite a wide range, with a few shown below:
Let's take a quick look at a couple of these (they need a blog in their own right, but a quick overview is hopefully useful):
- Real Time Location Services (RTLS): Tracking of Wi-Fi devices and tags
- Wayfinding: Application to guide you around a facility with way finding instructions on your device
- Temperature Monitoring: Automated monitoring and reporting of fridges
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Cisco Spaces Summary
There's a lot more to explore in Cisco Spaces than we have run through in this blog.
The suite of applications take your Wi-Fi network to the next level, with the use of location data, you can really start to get greater value from your Wi-Fi network, enabling time saving and efficient processes and procedures.
There's a couple of key aspects of Cisco Spaces that's worth a look and will be a couple of future blogs:
- Asset Locater: Formerly Operational Insights, this is a component to track your devices - anything with Wi-Fi built in, or you can attach a location tracking tag to
- Internal IoT Services: Formerly BLE Manager, management for Bluetooth beacons
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