Cisco Enables New Wireless Business Applications

Cisco Systems (www.cisco.com) announced the Cisco 2700 Series Wireless Location Appliance, the industry's first easy to deploy solution for simultaneously tracking thousands of IEEE 802.11 enabled wireless clients from directly within a customer's existing wireless local area network (LAN) infrastructure.

The Cisco 2700 Series Wireless Location Appliance brings the power of a cost-effective, high resolution location solution that optimizes the performance of the wireless LAN for support of voice, data and now location, while rapidly locating security threats.

"Lee Memorial Hospital is dedicated to providing state-of-the-art healthcare in South Florida while meeting tremendous demand to increase operational efficiencies at the same time," said Michael Smith, CIO of Lee Memorial Hospital.

The Cisco 2700 Series Wireless Location Appliance uses the radio frequency (RF) fingerprinting capabilities of the Cisco Wireless Control System (WCS) to accurately locate authorized or unauthorized 802.11-enabled devices to within a few meters.

Building a single wireless LAN infrastructure capable of supporting multiple services also enables Cisco global strategy alliance partner IBM to target a broad range of industry segments with new wireless applications, such as location based services.

"Location services enable enterprises to deploy new business applications that harness the unique attributes of wireless mobility," said Don Lopes, Director, Global Wireless Business Development, IBM Global Services.

Together, Cisco and IBM are partnering to advance the use of active RFID tagging on a wireless LAN network to help customers such as Westchester Medical Center track and manage high-value portable equipment and 802.11 devices.

"At Westchester Medical Center customer care is paramount," said Tom Toscano, Director of Telecommunications, Westchester Medical.

"The Cisco Wireless Location Appliance brings the power of high-resolution location to business-critical applications," said Alan Cohen, Senior Director of Product Management for Cisco's Wireless Networking Business Unit.

To facilitate the adoption of location-based services in the enterprise, the Cisco Wireless Location Appliance comes equipped with a rich and open Application Programming Interface (API).

"Today's announcement is great news for any customer that wants to extend the power and intelligence of the network," said Mike McGuinness, President and CEO of PanGo Networks. "Cisco has made it possible for seamless integration between the network and location-aware applications, like PanGo Locator. The resulting solutions are a significant leap forward and unlike anything available in the market today."

The Cisco 2700 Series Wireless Location Appliance has a U.S. list price of $14,995 and is scheduled to ship in June 2005.