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Coming soon — Intelligent cities

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

    Intelligent urbanization is a term we haven't heard before. Please explain

to us what it means.



Chambers: Giving to global citizens a better quality of life has always been

on Cisco's agenda for a long time. We are here at the Bangalore Global Delivery

Centre with Cisco's intelligent urbanization vision — we believe cities that run

on IT can change the quality of life for its citizens and improve civic services

and management. By 2030, the number of people living in urban areas is set to

grow from 3 Billion today to 5 Billion. Already, the world's 20 most populous

cities account for 75% of the world's energy consumption. It is about time

cities and towns became 'intelligent' enough to counter this change.

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Has this initiative been carried out anywhere outside of India before?



Chambers: I want to assure everyone in India that we are not here for

arbitrage; we have made India, Cisco's global delivery centre East, because in

today's technology world, nobody is moving faster than India. 20% of our top

talent is based in India, and have invested USD 1.16 Billion here. Cisco has

collaborated in intelligent urbanization initiatives for half a dozen cities of

the world. In San Jose, transportation, in London, smart energy grid, in Medina,

Saudi Arabia, a knowledge city, in Incheon, South Korea, an entire satellite

town to the capital, Seoul, and city specific solutions for Brussels and

Barcelona. A complete intelligent city vision covering transport, sports and

entertainment, smart buildings, security and power efficiency is what we have

come up with for India. As a starting point, we are signing a MoU with the

Government of Karnataka towards a vision of an intelligent city, which will

embrace the initiatives Cisco has embarked on across the world and provide as a

complete all round package. An ideal example of this is the Bangalore

Metropolitan Bus Stand that has been equipped with a live 24x7 high quality

video surveillance, to avert terror attacks.

John Chambers,

Chairman and CEO,



Cisco descended upon


Bangalore a few days back, with a vision to bring what he calls 'intelligent
urbanization' to India. After signing a MoU with the Government of



Karnataka, he spoke to


PCQuest about the initiative, and more:


Are you planning to reach out to smaller towns as well?



Chambers: I have personally noticed that India has a large number of small

and mid-sized companies that in more ways than one, share the same vision of an

intelligent city. Cisco is open to reach out to them, understand their

technology, and use Cisco's expertise in networking to connect their

technologies to the larger ecosystem. It is the small companies located in the

small towns that understand the grass-root problems, and they use simple

technology to solve their problems. I invite these companies to approach Cisco

and join us in this intelligent urbanization programmes.

Aren't there other important issues to tackle when we are in the middle of

an economic breakdown?



Chambers: Cisco believes India can do a lot to solve this crisis. We have

done this in the past when the Asian economic crisis happened, every other

company shifted people back to the US. Cisco recruited more people in Asia. This

time too, we believe that India is to a great extent, unaffected in the long

run, and more importantly, the strength of the innovative thinking by the IT

fraternity here, and their contribution to the rest of the world, will help

itself and other countries overcome this crisis. We have always taken India

seriously, and we still do, whether it is by retaining our agreement with Satyam,

or to device this intelligent city vision for Bangalore.

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