Cisco has signed a strategic agreement with Electronics City Industries Association (ELCIA) to set up a Internet of Things (IoT) Innovation Hub in Bangalore. The company claims that this will be Asia's first end-to-end IoT Innovation Hub and will provide a much-needed fillip to the Electronic System Design & Manufacturing (ESDM) ecosystem in the Garden City. Cisco mentions that it chose ELCIA for this project because ELCIA is the only brownfield ESDM cluster in the country which has received an in-principal approval for a financial grant from the Indian government. As part of this tie-up, Cisco will help provide the network infrastructure and expertise for testing and production of electronic product prototypes for an "IoT enabled smart city environment". This project is being undertaken as part of Cisco Smart+Connected Communities initiative, that aims to focus on using the network to deploy digitally enabled transportation, healthcare, education, utilities, energy grid and real estate in cities. The company mentions that through its living lab, ESDM startups and other electronic city companies will be able to build solutions for city infrastructure management including Smart Parking, Smart CCTV Surveillance, Smart Street Lighting, Smart Water Management/Leak Detection and Community Messaging. This project will be making use of Cisco's Smart+Connected City WiFi solution to enable community WiFi services and allow access to public utility offerings. ELCIA will also be embedding Cisco's network equipment (access points, routers, switches) and other required hardware & software applications that will be connected to the smart city’s fibre-optic backbone network. Electronic City will be the testing ground during the first phase of this smart city project. It…
