architecture overview transforming cities into smart

Architecture Overview

Transforming Cities into Smart+Connected Communities How Cisco’s Three Technology Architectures Can Support Your Vision for the Future

Architecture OverviewTransforming Cities into Smart+Connected Communities

© 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

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This paper provides heads of IT departments, enterprise architects, consultants, systems integrators and urban planners with a practical path for transformation. It examines how Cisco® Smart+Connected Communities is helping communities around the world to achieve long-lasting economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Smart+Connected Communities does this by using the network as the underlying platform—along with proven technology architectures and prevalidated solutions—to weave together people, services, community assets, and information.

This overview is intended to help decision makers in local, regional, and national governments to plan their strategies effectively. It will help them to be better prepared and informed. Ultimately, this insight will help ensure they are better equipped to plan their implementations, navigate pitfalls, reduce risk, deliver revenue and profitability improvements, and speed benefits to citizens, municipal employees, private companies, and visitors.



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The Big PictureMunicipalities and their partners—education, healthcare, transportation, telecommunications, safety and security, building systems, utilities, and sports and entertainment providers—are wrestling with an increasingly complex set of priorities. These include:

• Navigating a global economic downturn that is impacting every aspect of how communities are managed, now and for the foreseeable future

• Driving down unemployment by closing the digital divide and ensuring social inclusion and equal opportunities for all

• Dealing with a population that is living longer and relocating to urban areas, in turn placing greater demands on healthcare, education, and public services

• Responding to public safety challenges as old crimes, such as vandalism and theft, meet with new age cybercrimes and terrorist activities

• Reducing pollution levels, while traffic congestion continues to rise

• Fixing ageing utility infrastructures that continue to waste water and electricity

• Moving to new operating models (such as cloud technologies, shared services, and private public partnership) that consolidate and deliver greater value from IT.



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What This Means to ITCIOs, enterprise architects, consultants, and systems integrators are at the forefront of this strategic agenda. In their role as agents for change, they are coming under increased pressure to implement wide-ranging improvements that build towards improving the day-to-day management of the community. These initiatives include extending fiber and wireless coverage, unifying wireless and wired networks, strengthening network and physical security, extending sensors and controls, centralizing building management, and introducing new applications that make the organization more productive, service-centric, and greener. Not only that, they must do all of this with less budget and resource.

Yet the reality is that most cities are being prevented from achieving transformation by barriers erected in the past. In many cases, a piecemeal approach whereby each agency or organization “farmed” its own IT estate has driven heavy investment in point technology solutions and multiple systems being deployed side-by-side.

The end result is a sprawling legacy of disparate, disconnected networks1, isolated command centers and management systems2, and a proliferation of databases3 that cannot interconnect or communicate with each other because they have been built using closed or proprietary technologies.

Limitations of a Nonarchitectural Approach In searching for a solution, care must be taken not to create further problems downstream. For example, simply collapsing infrastructures onto a single platform may support centralized building management, but equally it can lead to quality of service, confidentiality, and scalability issues. Likewise, using a nonarchitectural approach to implement a public / private infrastructure makes it harder to consistently enforce security policy and so increases the risk of creating vulnerabilities elsewhere in the network. It might also prove a barrier in the future to switching parties.

In contrast, an architectural-based solution provides a foundation that can meet the needs of all stakeholders. For example, the same network that connects local government could make it possible to integrate roadside pollution sensors with traffic management systems. Not only could this give a command and control center the ability to more closely co-ordinate traffic light timings and speed limit indicators, such control would enable government to minimize vehicle carbon emissions in real time.

1 Voice, data, video, and wireless networks2 CCTV and video archives as well as sensors and actuators that control for traffic management, utilities metering, heating, and lighting systems3 Planning, land registry, licensing, health, schools, homeland security, and so on



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Navigating the ChallengesFor three city governments featured in this paper, these IT challenges and limitations are a situation they knew only too well. Although each journey is taking a different route, the destination is the same: reduce complexity, fragmentation, and expense.

• In Spain, the City Council of Rivas Vaciamadrid wanted to improve control of physical security and energy and water consumption. In order to do this it had to first consolidate a complicated IT environment comprising multiple infrastructures serving 62 offices, various contact centers, and command and control centers, 22 external companies, and over 1000 Wi-Fi users.

• In the case of Guldborgsund in Denmark, Citizen Service Centers are an important part of community life, providing access to experts, information, and a range of online services. For the leaders of the municipality the question was how to maintain high quality of services, especially in rural areas, while also reducing costs and increasing productivity.

• Castilla-La Mancha presents one of Spain’s most challenging demographics for delivering public services: although much of the population lives in five major cities, a significant portion of its citizens are widely dispersed. By implementing a Cloud strategy, Castilla-La Mancha sought to extend reach and accelerate the rollout of e-government (pensions, tax, passports, driving licenses, vehicle registration, and so on) while also developing Papás 2.0, an innovative web portal connecting over 100 educational centers with online learning and virtual classroom services.

These examples reinforce Cisco’s view that transforming cities and communities cannot be achieved in a sustainable, cost-effective way with a nonarchitectural approach and point product features.

Rather, what is needed is a holistic, architecture-based strategy that enables municipalities and partners to share ideas, plans, and budgets.



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The Emergence of Smart+Connected CommunitiesUsing its know-how around three technology architectures (Borderless Networks, Collaboration, and Data Center and Virtualization), Cisco has developed Smart+Connected Communities, a vision that uses the network as the platform to transform physical communities into connected communities running on networked information to achieve:

• Economic sustainability: Creating jobs, boosting key industries and attracting new businesses

• Social sustainability: Providing services that enhance citizen quality of life and social inclusion

• Environmental sustainability: Lowering environmental impact and creating a greener society

A Cohesive Approach, Based on Proven ArchitecturesCisco Smart+Connected Communities offers a practical roadmap for accelerating city transformation by using proven enterprise architectures and a structured approach that is both “top-down” (because it takes a holistic view at the problem definition, and does not try to fit pinpoint solutions ignoring the broader perspective), and “bottom-up” in nature (because it takes advantage of real-life customer experiences to develop its solutions). This approach meets the interests of stakeholders at four levels within an organization:

• Strategic: Addressing the needs of business decision makers when describing the vision, goals and capability requirements. Examples include city mayors, chiefs of police, and elected officials for education.

• Operational: Capturing the relationship and information exchange between logical entities, people and processes. Examples include heads of city operations of a city, heads of school district facilities, and heads of transport authority security.

• Functional: Describing the logical systems and services that support the operational requirements, and providing the long-term technology roadmap to support the strategic vision and goals. Examples include CIOs and enterprise architects.

• Technical: Including the technology devices, features and standards that implement logical systems. Examples include IT experts of a city, technical leaders of a transport authority.

The following pages explain the underlying Cisco architectures: Borderless Networks, Collaboration, and Data Center and Virtualization and how they support city transformation.



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Borderless Network ArchitectureCisco Borderless Network Architecture (see Figure 1) lays the foundations for Smart+Connected Communities by providing a platform that makes it easier, quicker, and less expensive to design, develop, and deploy a range of intelligent applications.

Cisco Borderless Network Architecture delivers the critical network services that underpin video, energy management, security, mobility, and application performance—on an end-to-end basis, so that the user experience is always on, seamless, and reliable, regardless of location or device type.

Figure 1Cisco Borderless Network Architecture

Borderless Endpoint/User Services

Securely, Reliably, Seamlessly, AnyConnect

Centralized Policy

Unified Management

Borderless Network Systems

Automated Multimedia

Borderless Infrastructure

Unified Access

Wireless

Campus Core

Routing

Unified Fabric

Switching

Extended Cloud

Security

Extended Edge

Borderless Network Services

Mobility:Motion

Energy Management: EneryWise

Security: TruSec

Multimedia Optimization:Medianet

App Performance: App Velocity

Application Networking/Optimization



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Cisco Motion with CleanAir technology provides a spectrum-aware, self-healing, and self-optimizing wireless platform that makes it easier to mesh together indoor and outdoor WLANs, while also reducing downtime and the risk of interference.

Using Cisco Catalyst® switching, Cisco EnergyWise offers an intelligent network-based approach that allows IT and building facilities operations to understand, optimize, and control power across the Smart+Connected Communities infrastructure and, potentially, any powered device.

Instead of a nonarchitectural approach that relies solely on perimeter security measures, Cisco TrustSec® protects the Smart+Connected Communities infrastructure end-to-end by helping to ensure policy-based access control, identity-aware networking7, and data integrity, including hop-by-hop encryption.

Challenges

• Dealing with growth in mobile users4, device-types5, and traffic6 traveling over the wireless LAN (WLAN)

• Connecting and consolid WLANs

• Inconsistent user experience (for example, in some places, users need to connect via a manual VPN, in others not)

• Poor coverage and blindspots

• Improving insight into, and control of, energy use

• Meeting environmental targets

• Building open infrastructures that allow safe information exchange between public and private groups

• Sharing the same infrastructure between multiple services—for example, by implementing virtual LANs (VLANs)

• Making endpoints more secure, and part of the agency’s overall security policy

• Implementing proactive, real-time threat detection

(Continued on next page.)

4 In the widest sense citizens, but also employees, students, visitors, suppliers, passengers, and fans 5 Laptops, phones, PDAs, tablets, and so on6 Voice, video, and data (including sensors, controls, and remote meter readings) 7 With the option of adding Cisco Network Admission Control to authenticate, authorize, evaluate, and remediate wired, wireless, and remote users before they can access the network

How Cisco Borderless Network Architecture Addresses These Challenges

The following list of challenges shows how Cisco Borderless Network Architecture responds to common problems experienced by municipalities and their partners:



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Cisco AVS Application Velocity Systems deliver network-integrated WAN optimization and scalable, application-aware acceleration8, improving traffic flow, bandwidth cost-efficiency, and the end-user experience.

Unlike conventional IP networks, Cisco Networking Capabilities for Medianet can detect and recognize the types of rich media traveling over fixed and wireless networks, and, if required, reformat these video streams to help ensure that they are properly transmitted to end devices in the best way possible11.


Challenges

• Optimizing application response times, in particular in congestion points

• Dealing with demand spikes from users all looking to access services at the same time

• High bandwidth costs

• Video performance issues9

• Difficulty in prioritizing video and rich-media applications

• Capacity issues / rising bandwidth costs10

8 Based on factors such as endpoint capability, access bandwidth and geographic access location9 Such as latency, jitter, and packet-dropping, all of which degrade end-user experience 10 Due to an inability to compress and transport video effectively across the network11 Medianet services are added to routers, switches, and rich-media endpoints, enabling the necessary transcoding as well as changing media and signal encoding to adapt to changing network conditions



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Rivas Vaciamadrid is located southeast of Madrid, and has a population of over 75,000. The city council has implemented a metro area network (MAN), which combines a fiber optic infrastructure between the different municipal offices with a Wi-Fi mesh network, to create a single IP platform that integrates all municipal services, including voice, data, video, and technical services for buildings, as well as those distributed throughout the city.

Using this IP network as a platform, the city council can manage a range of services, including unified communications and IP telephony, terrestrial trunked radio and dual- band GSM telephones, the city’s call center, the public announcement system, management of the technical departments of municipal offices, video surveillance, traffic light control, and access control. The same platform also supports Rivas Al Dia TV, and mobility in the streets of the city for personnel working for the city council. In addition to free Internet access in 82 municipal centers (schools, cultural centers, sports and leisure complexes) and at bus stops, the city council is also offering Internet access on roads and at home. Developed in conjunction with a service provider, the service uses the Wi-Fi Mesh network and is expected to provide a return on investment (ROI) of the deployed Wi-Fi network within four years.

Benefits include:

• 35 percent energy saving from greener buildings and smarter management

• 3000 tons in CO2 emissions eliminated (by using the IP network to optimize traffic light control)

• 50 percent reduction in the cost of communications, water consumption and lighting (saving around US$435,000)

• Expenditure in the municipality is currently the same as it was in 2005; the difference is that many more online services are being offered

• Better management of people and assets (through RFID and presence enablement)

• Ability to deploy public safety solutions, cheaper and more effectively

• Return on investment of the public MAN network leasing unused optic fiber capacity to service providers

• Management of new public lightning with LED technology based on intelligent video analysis with reductions in consumption of up to 80 percent.

To view the video case study, visit: http://youtu.be/UxWJZb7iIWQ

Cisco Borderless Networks in Action: Rivas Vaciamadrid



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Collaboration ArchitectureCisco Collaboration Architecture (Figure 2) builds on Cisco Borderless Networks, and enables the integration of existing and new collaboration technologies—offered on premises, or as a software as a service. Cities and their citizens both benefit from instant access to people, information, processes and business tools—anytime, anywhere, on any device—improving interactions, decision making, efficiency, and service delivery.

The following list of challenges explains how, through the introduction of Cisco Collaboration Services and applications, this architecture removes common problems experienced by municipalities and their partners. Cisco collaboration applications include IP communications, mobile applications, customer care, telepresence, conferencing, messaging, and enterprise social software.

Customers who ignore the benefits of an architectural approach will typical invest in a portfolio of disjointed applications to answer the individual requests of their stakeholders.

Infrastructure Virtual Machines Network Storage

Collaboration Services

Presence

Location

Policy and Security Management

Session Management

Client Frameworks

Content Management

Tagging

Communications and Collaboration Applications

Messaging

Enterprise Social Software

Conferencing

Mobile Applications

IP Communications

Customer Care

TelePresence

On Premise Hybrid SaaS

Figure 2Cisco Collaboration Architecture



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Cisco Collaboration Architecture:

Takes a holistic view of customer needs and provides a modular, integrated set of solutions. Customers can feel confident that the solution they select today will integrate with new solutions they will deploy in the future, thereby maximizing their investments.

Uses presence and location services to extend reach, speed, and efficiency based on real-time situational awareness.

Uses single-number reach and real-time messaging for immediate communications among multiple parties and devices.

Provides one console and one inbox for everything—email, IM, voice messages—and the ability to share calendars and applications, or create a virtual meeting, all at the press of a button.

Introduces new search capabilities, such as metadata tagging, across voice and video media, and semantic processing services13.

Delivers intelligent contact routing, call treatment, network-to-desktop computer telephony integration (CTI), and multichannel contact management over the Cisco Smart+Connected Communities infrastructure.


Challenges

• Maximizing investment in existing assets12

• Improving visibility of people and resources

• Removing barriers to communications and ineffective decision making

• Streamlining communications

• Speeding retrieval of critical information

• Improving workflows and access to expertise

12 For example, PBX systems, video conferencing endpoints, and so on13 Coding or decoding data from communications patterns across audio, video, and text



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In Demark, Guldborgsund Kommune has created Europe’s first remote-controlled (virtual) citizen service by integrating the Cisco Digital Media System and Cisco TelePresence® solutions with the ONLINET Queue Management System. Agents now work from a central location and act as a virtual receptionist, or service center agent on Cisco TelePresence units in the remote citizen service centers. During the sessions, citizens can share any documents with the agent using a live scanner.

Benefits include:

• US$100,000 savings in the first year, and twice that amount in subsequent years

• Created new ways to collaborate and engage with citizens

• Made services more accessible with shorter, cheaper journeys for constituents

• Better and more productive use of staff time

• Accelerated decision making and administrative processes

• Reduced carbon footprint through travel avoidance

To view the video case study, visit: www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns813/vds_guldborgsund.html

Cisco Architecture in Action: Guldborgsund Kommune



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Data Center and Virtualization ArchitectureCisco Data Center and Virtualization Architecture unites compute, network, and storage domains within one management system so that citizen services can be designed, tested, and delivered through the best cloud-computing approach: private, public, or hybrid . Moreover, the architecture enables new services to be launched faster and more cost-effectively through the introduction of shared services models and the consolidation, virtualization, and automation of data center operations.

Figure 3Cisco Data Center and Virtualization Architecture

FlexpodPredesigned, validated, Flexible Infrastructure that can grow and scale to meet cloud computing requirements

Vblocks30 racks reduced down to 3 racks

Provisioning applications in hours instead of weeks

Secure Multi-tenancySecurely sharing servers between multiple users/groups without having to add another server

Virtual DesktopsOver 4000 desktops in a single rack

Savings of up to 60+% per PC per year Significant savings in operations

Unified Fabric Unified Network Services Unified Computing

MDS/ Nexus 2000/ 4000/ 5000/ 7000

Nexus 7000/ Nexus 1000v/ Nexus 1010/ UCS

Nexus 1000v/ Fabric Path/OTV

ACE application controllers

WAAS WAN acceleration

ASA data carrier security solutions

Virtual Security Gateway (VSG)

Network Analysis Module (NAM)

Cisco UCS 5200 series Fabric Interconnects

Cisco UCS 5100 series Blade Server Chasis

Cisco UCS 2100 Series Fabric Extenders

Cisco UCS 5 Series Blade Servers

Cisco UCS network adapters

Cisco UCS Manager

Data Center Network Manager (DCNM)



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The following list of challenges shows how this architecture responds to common problems experienced in the data center.

The architecture:

Creates a unified fabric, allowing both Ethernet (LAN) and Fibre Channel (SAN) traffic to travel through the same cable.

Introduces 10 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and Cisco Unified Network Services that improve application availability, security, acceleration, and performance monitoring—in any form15 and any environment16.

Makes it easier to “scale up” using Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS™) based on advanced Intel Xeon processors and extended memory technology, allowing more applications to be hosted per blade server.

Uses VN-Link to bridge the server, storage, and network management domains to help ensure changes in one environment are communicated to the others.

Enables new levels of pre-provisioning and automation18 and in-service software upgrades (removing the need for downtime) while reducing workloads and points of management19.

Implements a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)20 strategy.

How Cisco Data Center and Virtualization Architecture Addresses These Challenges

Challenges

• Simplifying cabling / reducing costs

• Improving application performance

• Making the most of limited data center space

• Improving visibility into virtual machines17

• Simplifying management and accelerating time-to-market for new services

• Avoiding expensive desktop refreshes

15 Dedicated appliances, embedded modules, and VMware virtualized platforms16 From the network core or computing edge, or both17 One of the biggest barriers to data center virtualization, a lack of visibility complicates accounting, troubleshooting, and the ability to apply security and policy at the virtual machine (VM) level18 Via Cisco UCS and the use of service profile templates19 For example, by using Cisco Nexus 1000V Series software switches to virtualize more servers, or Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extenders to automatically update the switches attached to them 20 Decoupling the user’s desktop computing environment from the physical hardware (PC, laptop, PDA) and hosting it securely on a virtual machine



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The regional government of Castilla-La Mancha provides health, education, and administration services for 919 municipalities, 54 percent of which have less than 500 inhabitants. However, 95 percent of the population have broadband access. Working with the Department of Presidency (another Cisco client), Castilla-La Mancha created a unique partnership model for sharing budget and accelerating the cloud-computing strategies of both organizations. Implementing Cisco Unified Computing System as part of a complete Vblock solution will allow it to rationalize and centralize data centers: from 18 (main sites) and 30 (smaller facilities) down to two.

This process will also see the consolidation of 130 physical servers (35 of which were end of life). Before, it could take hours, or in some cases, days to provision a new service. Castilla-La Mancha can now get a virtual data center up and running in eight minutes. Papás 2.0 is transforming the way education services are being delivered. Over 7000 students, 30,000 teachers, and 16,000 parents currently use the system, and these numbers continue to grow.

Benefits include:

• Potential savings of US$550,000 (mainly through data center and server consolidation)

• Increased agility: matching any approach (cloud, outsourcing, and internal hosting) to any application, in a way that delivers the best value for money

• Reduced time-to-market: faster provisioning times and the ability to very easily and rapidly scale-up services

• Consolidation, virtualization, and automation provide further efficiencies

• Greener data centers with savings on space, power, cooling, and infrastructure

• Improved mobility with an attractive and cost-effective business case for VDI

To learn more about this case study, visit: www.cisco.com/web/strategy/government/cloud_computing_for_govt.html

Cisco Architecture in Action: Castilla-La Mancha



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Cisco Smart+Connected Communities SolutionsUsing the Smart+Connected Communities architectural approach, Cisco has drawn on its experience in innovative projects around the world to develop a range of integrated solutions, for Cisco’s Community+Exchange. Cisco’s Community+Exchange, is a back-office operations center that helps with the planning and day-to-day operations and management of a community. By providing the network as a highly secure and resilient service delivery platform, you can share information and collaborate across a community’s ecosystem of government agencies and private sector partners to facilitate utilities, transportation, telecommunications, safety and security, building systems, health, and government social services.

Utilities Use an intelligent IP-based network platform for energy, water, and gas management and consumption that helps you gain better visibility into energy consumption, reduce energy costs, improve operational and energy efficiencies, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Transportation Build highly secure, intelligent, multimodal transportation systems to foster innovative, real-time communications and collaboration while helping ensure safety and security. Integrate workplaces, residential buildings, travel service providers, airlines, and hotels onto a single platform.

Safety & Security Give emergency and security personnel real-time access to information that helps automate detection analysis, coordinate incident response, and facilitate communication and collaboration, helping to ensure a safer community.

Real Estate Help make new and existing buildings more energy efficient and productive workplaces, easier to manage with centralized functions, and environmentally sustainable.

Government Build the foundation to engage citizens of all ages and abilities, promote prosperity, help attract a new generation of employees, and ensure public safety. Government agencies can be more connected, contain costs, and better serve the needs of an on-demand culture by increasing the effectiveness of public safety, justice, and corrections agencies, improving workforce productivity, and enhancing citizen experience and quality of life.

The Cisco Community+Exchange addresses the needs of these key areas and is offered as part of the Smart+Connected Communities set of integrated solutions. For more information, visit: www.cisco.com/web/strategy/smart_connected_communities.html



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Conclusions In order to drive social, economic, and environmental sustainability, communities need to think outside of traditional models and form higher-value relationships with businesses, citizens, and strategic partners at the local, regional, and national levels.

However, transforming cities and communities cannot be achieved in as sustainable, cost-effective way by applying more of the same old recipe: a piecemeal and fragmented IT approach that relies on nonarchitectural solutions and point product features. What is needed is an approach that uses proven enterprise architectures and is both top-down and bottom-up.

By putting the Cisco Smart+Connected Communities framework at the heart of your IT strategy, you can benefit not only from Cisco’s experience gained on other city transformation projects throughout the world, but also from its expertise and significant R&D investment in Borderless Networks, Collaboration, and Data Center and Virtualization Architectures.

Making the TransitionCisco will work with you, from idea to execution, using industry-specific solutions, an ecosystem of partners, and innovative business models. To help assist and ease migration, Cisco offers the following set of support services and financial enablers:

• Cisco ROI models: To support the business case process and financial analysis

• Professional services: Pre-implementation services, planning, design, and testing

• Cisco Capital® financing solutions: Options for financing (sale and lease back), helping safeguard against technology obsolescence (technology refresh), and cash flow management (capital expenditure to operating expenditure, deferred payments)

• Cisco Focused Technical Support Services: Post-implementation, dedicated high-touch operations management, technical support, and engineering services



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Next StepsFor more information, visit: www.cisco.com/web/strategy/smart_connected_communities.html.

To discuss how Cisco can help you to accelerate your vision for city transformation, please contact your Cisco account manager or authorized Cisco partner.

Cisco has more than 200 offices worldwide. Addresses, phone numbers, and fax numbers are listed on the Cisco Website at www.cisco.com/go/offices.

Cisco and the Cisco Logo are trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. 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. (1005R)

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