If you like you keep yourself current within the realms of Enterprise Networking, I've got a treat for you.
Cisco have published up some great guides for enterprise Wi-Fi and Catalyst Center - and here's our exclusive run through!
Factor in the ability to be able to undertake tasks and trigger outcomes and you have a pretty interesting product.
The major question to get your head around with Cisco Catalyst Center Spaces is: what does it actually do?
The answer is—a lot. The key point is that, with a range of vendor applications it can interconnect to or work alongside, there are numerous productivity use cases.
Not to be confused with Cisco Catalyst Center (which is the network management application), Catalyst Center Spaces, while being part of the same family, offers completely different functionality.
How Does This Fit Into Catalyst Center Spaces?
Catalyst Center Spaces leverages location information and displays it on a map, enabling organizations to utilize this data in a variety of ways.
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Connecting Cisco Catalyst Center Spaces in your environment is straightforward. There are two primary ways to connect:
Either of these methods will connect you to the Catalyst Center Spaces cloud. Catalyst Center Spaces is licensed per Access Point (AP) and accessed through a standard web browser.
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With the ability to access via a standard web browser, once configured you have access to Catalyst Center Spaces from anywhere you need - or via any device - in your organisation.
The Cisco Catalyst Center 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 Catalyst 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 Catalyst 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.
One of the most powerful aspects of Cisco Catalyst Center Spaces is that it’s not just a single application.
Cisco has a great blog on Catalyst Spaces and Indoor IoT Services (I’ve included a couple of images below), which is worth a look for some background.
Like many modern platforms that allow you to integrate third-party widgets and applications, Catalyst Center Spaces offers this capability as well.
This is where the real business value comes in—you can take your existing location systems, integrate them into Catalyst Center Spaces, and utilize any existing location beacons and tags directly within the platform.
This means you can leverage your Cisco Location data, the Catalyst Center Spaces front end, and a range of snap-in applications.
There’s a broad selection available, with a few examples 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):
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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 Catalyst Center Spaces that's worth a look and will be a couple of future blogs:
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