Cisco’s current and future projects are related to the development of smart cities which can be characterised by the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) in virtually every system of the urban area. According to the company’s plans, parking, lighting, waste management, wireless Internet connection and other parts of the surrounding environment of every smart city would be supported with advanced technology provided by Cisco (Cisco 2017). A number of cities already have some of the described equipment installed and supported by Cisco as the conglomerate recently announced its initiative to fund this path to innovation (Preimesberger 2017).
PESTEL
- Political: Some countries encourage modernization and support the use of technology on the governmental level which allows companies such as Cisco to promote their products (Mehmood et al. 2017). For instance, the government of Busan is one of the major partners of Cisco in the process of the IoT implementation. Thus the industry’s growth is favoured by administrations which act as its key stakeholders.
- Economic: A small number of countries can maintain the use of the IoT technology. Countries with developing economies, on the other hand, do not have enough stability to consider this option. The examples of cities with successful implementation of similar technology include Busan, Chicago, Santander and Milton Keynes (Mehmood et al. 2017). Two of those areas are partnered with Cisco. The introduction of innovative technology may lead to a decrease in government spending, which can positively affect the economy of smart cities. However, the beginning of the process should be supported by a stable financial basis.
- Socio-cultural: People that operate the city’s infrastructure should get a specific education in order to work with new equipment. Furthermore, the community of smart cities should also have the social responsibility and a general understanding of the system’s concepts. Albino, Berardi and Dangelico (2015) note that such changes should be supported by an appropriate level of expertise and experience. The implementation and competitiveness of the IoT systems are possible in urban areas with skilled individuals who possess enough knowledge about technology.
- Technological: The development of wireless communication is the primary driver of the smart cities’ initiative as it enables more ways to change the urban environment. The innovation in the field of the IoT may become the key competitive point in this industry. Moreover, urban areas need to have a good base for the new equipment in order to become a part of the program. As Cisco (2017) notes, traditional city networks may not work well with the latest technology.
- Environmental: The industry of smart technology is based on the belief that the IoT can make cities clean and people – healthy (Boulos & Al-Shorbaji 2014). The issue of materials used by older technology may be eliminated with the implementation of new equipment. Companies should remember that even with their latest hardware they should account for their gas emissions and electricity generation to stay sustainable. Nevertheless, a part of the initiative is devoted to data collection, which can help monitor the state of the environment in the cities.
- Legal: Currently, regulations of smart city technology do not exist in a standardised form. Many of the present laws are related to the protection of personal data from misuse and corruption. The issue of data security can be considered one of the IoT industry’s leading concerns (Mehmood et al. 2017).
Critical Success Factors
- Cisco should evaluate the stability of the city’s economy to ensure its ability to sustain new systems.
- The company needs to develop new areas for the IoT implementation. The infrastructure of a smart city should be automated by a combination of systems that work together as a single entity.
- Cisco should keep the equipment’s management intuitive and straightforward in order to appeal to more people.
- The company has to increase the level of security and devise more protective measures to avoid any issues.
- All systems should be able to continue to function or have alternative sources of power in cases of emergency, power outage or malfunction.
Strategic Gap Analysis
It is clear that Cisco’s plans include expanding their program of smart cities and equipping more areas with innovative technology. Currently, the company presents a number of cases where some parts of the initiative are implemented in multiple urban regions. For instance, approximately eleven cities are highlighted by the company as areas with a successful adoption of the IoT technology (Cisco 2017). The territories utilize smart equipment for parking, traffic flow, pedestrian safety, citywide Wi-Fi and other elements of the city environment. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether any of these areas have more than one or two types of smart technology installed. Thus the goal of Cisco can be to implement more forms of hardware and software to a single city and to continue this process in other areas. In order to achieve this, Cisco needs to allocate more funding and concentrate its research on the IoT technology. Moreover, the company has to find a city that can incorporate several different IoT systems into its infrastructure.
The company is concerned with improving such aspects as security and stability. Cities are afraid to use the new technology because of possible complications with power supply and increased dependency on technology (Fearn 2017). Currently, Cisco is working on solutions for these problems as suggested by its plan’s description. The announcement of Cisco Kinetic, for example, shows the firm’s developments in the field of cloud-computing which lessens the gap between the present situation and future advancements.
Reference List
Albino, V, Berardi, U & Dangelico, RM 2015, ‘Smart cities: definitions, dimensions, performance, and initiatives’, Journal of Urban Technology, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 3-21.
Boulos, MNK & Al-Shorbaji, NM 2014, ‘On the Internet of Things, smart cities and the WHO Healthy Cities’, International Journal of Health Geographics, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 10-15.
Cisco 2017, Cities and communities. Web.
Fearn, N 2017, ‘Cisco announces $1 billion smart cities fund’, Internet of Business. Web.
Mehmood, Y, Ahmad, F, Yaqoob, I, Adnane, A, Imran, M & Guizani, S 2017, ‘Internet-of-things-based smart cities: recent advances and challenges’, IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 55, no. 9, pp. 16-24.
Preimesberger, C 2017, ‘Cisco reveals $1 billion program for smart cities infrastructure’, eWeek. Web.