SAN JOSE, Calif, June 29, 2011– Cisco today introduced AppHQ™, an application ecosystem built specifically for Cisco Cius™ that provides new ways to create, manage and rapidly deploy tablet applications in the enterprise. Cisco Cius, an Android-based tablet created for the enterprise, combines voice, video, collaboration, and virtualization capabilities unlike any other tablet on the market today. With Cisco Cius, organizations can now deliver an optimized tablet with enterprise-grade security, as a natural extension of the enterprise network. The device provides customers with mobility, centralized manageability, virtual content creation and computing capabilities, and a comprehensive suite of collaboration applications.

AppHQ provides developers with tools and resources to create, test and market applications for Cisco Cius, and allows IT managers to control which applications can be used on the devices. Additionally, companies can create private, custom-branded application storefronts for their organizations where employees can find, publish and procure applications that complement their business environments. 

During a series of media events hosted today, Cisco highlighted that CDW, Nervecentre Software, Nottingham University Hospitals, Palomar Pomerado Health, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and Verizon are among customers using Cisco Cius to help employees remove barriers to mobile productivity in the office, around campus, at home or on the road. 

Introducing Cisco AppHQ: A Trusted Source for Business Applications

Cisco AppHQ is a highly secure, cloud-based user storefront that provides capabilities for end users and IT managers not found in other application stores today. Some of these capabilities include:

• Testing and validation:IT managers want to know that applications deployed in their environment are appropriate for the enterprise. Cisco AppHQ provides IT managers and users with a "trusted source" for applications, ensuring that every application within AppHQ goes through Cisco validation testing, whether developed by Cisco, third-party Android developer partners, or users within the enterprise. The validation process includes interoperability testing both for the application itself and in typical configurations within the device.
• Store-within-a-Store: Enterprises will have a Cisco hosted, highly-secure and private application store within AppHQ. Businesses can customize the storefront, following their corporate branding guidelines, including use of logos, icons and color schemes. Beyond customization, the store-within-a-store is a platform that customers can use to deploy applications efficiently in their organizations.  For example, a financial services company could deploy applications pertaining to their back office operations, such as human resources or payroll apps, and populate those applications on the devices of relevant employees. 
• Empowers IT management:With AppHQ Manager™, IT will have the ability to allow (or deny) access to application marketplaces by user role or device and to grant (or deny) access to applications by type, source or category. This unique capability will let IT organizations balance the individual freedom of users with the enterprise-class policies on security and cost efficiency.

Additional Details about Cisco AppHQ and Cisco Cius

• The AppHQ ecosystem will include Cisco selected, industry-leading business and consumer applications that deeply integrate Cisco collaboration capabilities, as well as validated business-to-business and business-to-consumer applications from developer partners. Cisco will continue to add applications to AppHQ based on customer requirements. IT managers can also select from approximately 200,000 applications in the Android Marketplace. 
• Cisco AppHQ offers a user-friendly interface to find and install applications, and a platform for user feedback about applications. End users can find information about an application, such as the publisher and release date, and install or update apps and even sort by category, such as most popular or new.
• Cisco Cius offers integrated access to the comprehensive suite of Cisco® Collaboration applications, including Cisco WebEx® meeting applications, Cisco Quad™ social software, Cisco Jabber® messaging, and Cisco TelePresence™.
• Cisco Cius is scheduled for global availability on July 31, 2011. The estimated street price is below $750 USD and Cisco has made available a new promotion* called "Triple V" (for Voice, Video and Virtualization) that could enable further price reductions below $700 USD. Pricing may vary by country. Basic access to Cisco AppHQ is included with every Cisco Cius device.
• With Cisco Cius, customers benefit from enterprise-class warranty and support with a single number to call. If necessary, a replacement can be obtained in 24 hours. There are also one, two and three-year warranty options from Cisco Services available, which follow an enterprise customer model. 

Supporting Quotes

Barry O'Sullivan, senior vice president, Communications and Collaboration Group, Cisco

"Cisco is the number one provider worldwide of telepresence and telephony endpoints and with the Cisco Cius tablet and AppHQ ecosystem, Cisco is extending its leadership in networked collaboration to the mobile form factor in a highly secure and controlled way. Our customers' positive response to Cius reflects how technology can change not only when and how we work, but also the way IT will deliver collaborative services to employees, and do so in a way that meets the needs of end users and developers and IT managers." 

Orlando Portale, chief innovation officer, Palomar Pomerado Health

"As the first health care system to develop its own mobile application for Cisco Cius, we sought to help improve physician satisfaction and patient care by giving our physicians a better collaboration tool with access to real-time data, regardless of location, in order to help them make more timely decisions. Our app, MIAA (Medication Information, Anytime, Anywhere) not only pulls patient records from disparate facilities on demand, but also lets multiple doctors consult via e-mail and video conferencing while they all view the same patient information. We chose the Cisco Cius because it allowed us to combine the flexibility of the Android platform with enterprise-grade security and virtualization, as well as access to important collaboration features like HD video."

Mike Smith, vice president enterprise communications, network and mobility, Verizon

"The promise of mobile Unified Communications and Collaboration for decentralized, accelerated decision-making is coming to light with the advent of intelligent 4G LTE networks, the cloud and enterprise tools such as the Cisco Cius. Our sales teams and customers will continue to benefit from cloud-based enterprise apps that help them get the job done from virtually anywhere with greater collaboration and speedier service delivery to their customers."

Elena Pokot, chief information officer, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

"One of the core values of our university is to prepare students to deal with complexity, diversity, and change in the 21^st century. To this end, we strive to enable them to communicate and collaborate on multiple levels within and outside of the organization, using a variety of means. When we equip faculty and student project teams with the Cisco Cius and its HD video capability with Cisco WebEx integration, we increase the level of communication and reduce their dependency on location by enabling a virtual presence. As a learning institution, we understand that having such capability provides a powerful enhancement to the collaboration process. This is particularly relevant for students, whose personal communication skills can further develop by observing and learning body language, and experiencing visual awareness with others."

Terry Stepien, president, Sybase iAnywhere

 "With the exponential growth of highly innovative personally owned and corporate-liable devices, such as the new Cisco Cius Android tablet, businesses are seeking a comprehensive platform to simplify and centralize the development, deployment, management and security of their mobile application landscapes across a widening array of device types. We are pleased to partner with Cisco to develop collaboration-enabled mobile applications that will leverage the unique capabilities of Cisco Cius to drive exceptional customer value."

Ken Snyder, emerging technology solutions manager, CDW

"Call center supervisors are challenged with needing to be accessible to their agents at all times, with the most up-to-date call center performance and management information; however, the very nature of their job requires that they are not tethered to a desk. CDW created an application for Cisco Cius to extend the capabilities of CDW's Mobile Wall Board to deliver a new realm of operational effectiveness and productivity. The app provides call center supervisors with instantaneous access to operational KPI data in order to take real-time corrective action in their operations, to increase responsiveness to their agents, and have a convenient all-in-one communication tool, including video calling and presence."

Vittorio Viarengo, vice president, End-User Computing, VMware

"VMware and Cisco are committed to delivering full-featured, user-centric solutions that enable people to work and collaborate freely – whether in the office or on the go. VMware View™ and the Cisco Cius offer customers of all sizes a best-of-breed virtual workspace that combines flexible and secure virtual desktops with unified collaboration designed to support rich multimedia content, enabling universal access to corporate applications and data."

Sumit Dhawan, vice president and general manager, Receiver and End-user Services, Citrix

"New tablets like the Cius are an example of the expansion of consumerization in the enterprise. Users want the flexibility to use a variety of devices to do their work. Citrix is partnering closely with Cisco, bringing virtualization and mobile collaboration together with Citrix Receiver for the Cisco Cius, so both users and IT benefit from this new and unique device."

Tags / Keywords:

Cisco Cius, Cius, enterprise tablet, Android, collaboration, unified communications, intercompany collaboration, enterprise, social software, Cisco Quad, Cisco WebEx, Cisco TelePresence, mobility, cloud computing, security, application, Cisco AppHQ

Supporting Materials

• Access a variety of materials from a brochure, to whitepapers and videos, to a 3-D animated model by visiting the Cisco Ciuswebsite.
• Cisco AppHQ
• Cisco Cius Developer Program
• Press Release: Cisco Cius and Nervecentre Software help Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust redirect 8,000 hours of nursing time a year into hands-on patient care
• More about Cisco Collaboration solutions

RSS Feed for Cisco: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/rss.html

About Cisco Collaboration

From award-winning IP communications to mobility, customer care, Web conferencing, messaging, enterprise social software, and interoperable telepresence experiences, Cisco brings together network-based, integrated collaboration solutions based on open standards. These solutions offered across on-premise, cloud-based or virtualized platforms, as well as services from Cisco and our partners, are designed to help promote business growth, innovation and productivity.

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

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Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company.

* The Triple V promotion extends through October 2011.

MIAA is a registered trademark of the Palomar Pomerado Health Foundation.