Cisco wins “Industrial IoT Innovation of the Year” in 2020 IoT Breakthrough Awards

The Cisco IoT portfolio is pushing industrial IoT connectivity to the edge, using intent-based networking that’s flexible, secure, scalable, and award-winning.

We’re honored to be named “Industrial IoT Innovation of the Year” in the 2020 IoT Breakthrough Awards for our Cisco Catalyst IW6300 Heavy Duty Series Access Points, which extend the IoT edge to new frontiers across manufacturing, oil and gas, mining, food processing, and other industries.

Cisco Catalyst IW6300 Heavy Duty Series Access Points are purpose-built wireless access points for hazardous locations. Traditional access points have numerous restrictions—they rarely meet regulatory requirements since they aren’t designed for heavy industrial environments, they necessitate multiple vendors and significant modifications, and their customization can be both time consuming and costly—making it challenging for businesses to realize real value and significant benefits of IoT in locations like mines, refineries, factory floors, and chemical plants. The Cisco Catalyst IW6300 Heavy Duty Access Points overcome conventional limitations with their IP67 rated, Class I, Division 2 certified form-factor that can withstand dust and water to operate in even the toughest of settings.

Every hazardous environment is unique. Whether a remote mine or local refinery, each location provides a different set of constraints, but presents the same additional value made available by digitization and connectivity. Monitor leaks, track assets and personnel, and control remote enabled devices from a central, safe location.

Imagine this scenario: 

A warning notification appears on the tablet of an oil refinery manager. A pipe’s pressure is at critical levels and if something isn’t done quickly, there could be a massive leak or explosion.

But with a few taps, she turns the intake off, allowing the pressure to diffuse. Then, using location awareness technology, she sees three workers nearby the pipe and dispatches them to fix it.

A few moments later, the workers realize this particular piping system is more complex than they expected. Every minute this pipe is down is lost revenue for the plant, so resolving the issue and getting the plant back online is crucial.

They place a video call to an offsite expert, who guides them through the replacement process. The plant goes back online in record time, and the plant manager breathes a sigh of relief.

None of this would be possible without the Cisco Catalyst® IW6300 Heavy Duty Series Access Points. They are the cornerstone of digitization for hazardous environments by providing resilient Wi-Fi connectivity.

Cisco Catalyst IW6300 Heavy Duty Series Access Points are the only heavy-duty access points on the market developed in conjunction with operational technology partners, enabling them to easily attach expansion modules to address specific use cases such as improving plant efficiency and safety using WirelessHART and ISA.100 wireless protocols.

The new access points deliver pervasive wireless connectivity including wireless mesh backhaul, providing mobile workers with highly secure, real-time data access in plant. Organizations can get reliable data collection, improve worker safety, and increase plant productivity – even in unpredictable conditions.

These new heavy-duty access points can leverage Cisco’s Intent-Based Networking technology, which removes the manual, time-intensive methods by which networks are traditionally managed. Instead, they capture business intent and translate it into network policy to make it easier to scale deployments. For the past few years, customers have been embracing this new way of managing networks across the campus and branch. Now, IT can work with operations to manage these IoT environments as well.

Cisco is continuing our legacy of innovation at Cisco Live 2020 next week in Barcelona, Spain. Join us to hear how our IoT solutions are transforming industries and accelerating the digital world. Our IoT Track provides complete information about Cisco’s IoT portfolio from connectivity, security, management and application enablement, to deploying IoT solutions from the edge to the cloud across multiple industries.

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