My Take On the Cisco Cius

Chances are that if you’re reading this blog, then you’ve already heard about Cisco’s upcoming Cius tablet, the miniature (7 inch screen, 1.15 lbs) enterprise version of the iPad, complete with a front mounted 720p camera capable of recording at 30fps. Other specifications and features include an 8 hr battery life under normal running conditions, support for WiFi, 3G, and eventually 4G, a dock with a handset and ‘HD Speakers’, and the Android OS.

Here’s the marketing video.

Note that it says,

"The intuitive contact driven user experience with Cisco Cius makes it easy for Diane to connect with her global team using Cisco Unified Communication and Collaboration Tools… "

Is it crazy complicated to connect with anything else? I would expect that a device that is running on an ‘open community’ OS doesn’t require specific infrastructure elements running in the background, but you never really know these days. It would be great if the Cius is sold as just a user agent, and not a component of some greater Cisco package.

Another thing that concerns me is the ‘under $1000’ price tag hint. Hopefully the price won’t be anywhere near $1000. Otherwise, it’s going to take a lot of convincing to get me to pay so much more than the price of an iPad, especially since iPad v2.0 will probably also have a front facing camera for video calls anyway.

One of the things I like about the device (and probably one of the main draws) is the Android OS, but there simply won’t be an active developer community that continuously puts out exceptional applications if the user agent doesn’t sell well. Great applications will drive sales, but I’m not convinced that Cius developers will have the same incentives as iPad developers. These days, many Android applications seem like an afterthought—the whole “We have an iPhone app, might as well make an Android one and release it next month” mentality. Cius will probably get the same treatment.

What is encouraging is Cisco’s overall expertise with enterprise solutions. They are in a much better position than Apple when it comes to enterprise hardware simply because they have the breadth and depth of experience to make it work.

I guess we'll see if we can recommend using Cius with OnSIP when it is released early next year.