Q. What is the Cisco® Connected Life User Experience (CLUE) Index and what is the relevance of the data it provides?
A. The Cisco CLUE Index measures the relative regional adoption of selected advanced applications and services across three user categories: At Home (residential services), At Work (business services), and On the Move (mobile services).
The Cisco CLUE Index provides an objective measure that captures the service adoption, rather than a subjective estimation, of a particular service's market size. The Cisco CLUE Index has two primary research goals:
• To measure the maturity of selected advanced services relative to one another within the three categories (At Home, At Work, and On the Move) in terms of their penetration and adoption.
• To provide an easy-to-use comparison of selected advanced services across global regions, as well as commentary about service adoption growth (or decline) relative to each region's market potential.
Q. What are the criteria for selecting services included in the Cisco CLUE Index?
A. The services selected for the Cisco CLUE Index are all end-user advanced services used at work, at home, and on the move. They are important in the evolving ways in which end users connect to their work and family and friends. The services have an economic impact on the service provider network on which they are delivered both as a cost (use of network resources) and as a revenue stream (means of profitability).
Q. What methodology or statistical model is the basis for the Cisco CLUE Index?
A. Cisco CLUE is an unweighted index, similar to a market capitalization stock index. In a market capitalization index, companies with the largest market capitalizations, or the greatest values, have the highest values in the index. Similarly, in the Cisco CLUE Index, services with the highest adoption relative to the addressable market have the highest values in the individual category indexes (Table 1). An equally weighted index would underweight services with high penetration and overweight services that have low penetration, but a market-weighted index maintains the actual penetration values. The Cisco CLUE Index represents the aggregated value of regional penetration of selected services set to a value of 100 for the base period (calendar year 2008). In 2009, each service's index has changed in proportion to the increase or decrease of its penetration.
Table 1 shows a sample calculation for the Cisco CLUE Index. In the example, the total service penetration value for Service 1 has increased by 20 percent and so has its index value. This proportionate increase in index values applies to all the service and region totals.
Table 1. Sample Cisco CLUE Index Regional and Service Calculation
2008
Service 1
Service 2
Service 3
Regional
Total
Regional Index Values
Region 1
0.30
0.40
0.05
0.75
29.41
Region 2
0.40
0.45
0.10
0.95
37.25
Region 3
0.20
0.25
0.15
0.60
23.53
Region 4
0.10
0.10
0.05
0.25
9.80
Services Total
1.00
1.20
0.35
2.55
100.00
Service Index Values
39.22
47.06
13.73
100.00
2009
Service 1
Service 2
Service 3
Regional
Total
Regional Index Values
Region 1
0.35
0.45
0.05
0.85
33.33
Region 2
0.50
0.50
0.10
1.10
43.14
Region 3
0.25
0.25
0.15
0.65
25.49
Region 4
0.10
0.15
0.05
0.30
11.76
Services Total
1.20
1.35
0.35
2.90
113.73
Service Index Values
47.06
52.94
13.73
113.73
Q. How are service penetration index values calculated?
A. The regional penetration of advanced services in each Cisco CLUE Index category is calculated based on relevant addressable markets. For example, for Internet-based services such as online video, online gaming, online music, social media, residential voice over IP (VoIP), and consumer instant messaging, the penetration is calculated based on the number of regional Internet users. For TV-based services such as multichannel television, time-delayed television (digital video recorder or personal video recorder), and video on demand (VoD), the number of regional households that have a TV subscription service is the basis for the penetration calculation.
Q. Did any changes occur from the last period to this period in the classification or calculation of the Cisco CLUE Index?
A. The methodology used to calculate the Cisco CLUE Index was maintained from the last period (March 2010) to this period. However, some changes were made in the service selection and classification, to more appropriately present the trends in adoption of advanced services across all three categories (At Home, At work, and On the Move). We dropped business email from the At Work category and consumer email from the At Home category, because we found that these are quite mature services across all regions. We created a new classification called personal video conferencing, which combines desktop video conferencing, video telephony, web conferencing with video, and executive video conferencing. We did this to allow a better comparison of all personal video conferencing services with group or room-based video conferencing services. Room-based video conferencing has been redefined to include group video conferencing that is room based (for example, the Cisco TelePresence® solution). We also distinguished Mobile business email and messaging, as these two services have quite different penetration rates and we wanted to show those separately.
As more comprehensive 2008 data became available from our research sources, we revised our baseline index value calculations (originally published in March 2010) to allow a consistent comparison. Because a change in even one service value affects all the values within that category, we have restated the entire baseline index values (from revised 2008 service adoption data). This restatement is reflected in the current Cisco CLUE Report.
Q. What data sources were used to create the Cisco CLUE Index?
A. The source data used to calculate service-penetration values was collected from a variety of syndicated or publicly available research reports from analyst organizations including comScore, Inc.; Gartner, Inc.; Informa Research Services; International Data Corporation (IDC); Ovum; Radicati Group, Inc.; Pyramid Research; Wainhouse Research LLC; SNL Kagan; International Telecommunications Union ( ITU); and Screen Digest.
Q. What is the difference between the Cisco CLUE Index service rank and region rank tables?
A. Service rank tables are specific to a region (see Cisco CLUE Report, Tables 8 through 10). They provide the relative ranking of advanced services according to their contribution to the regional index. For example, if the contribution of next-generation television (NGN TV) services is higher than the contribution of consumer VoIP services for the Asia Pacific region, then NGN TV will be ranked higher in the service rank table for Asia Pacific relative to consumer VoIP.
In contrast, region rank tables are service-specific (see Cisco CLUE Report, Tables 11 through 13). These tables provide the relative ranking of regions for a particular service in order of the regional penetration. For example, business instant messaging has the highest service-penetration index value in Western Europe relative to all other regions. Thus, Western Europe will be ranked first in the region rank table for business instant messaging.
Q. May I or my organization or company use or publish Cisco CLUE Index data?
A. Yes. Cisco welcomes press, analysts, service providers, and other interested industry parties (business, regulatory, or academic) to use Cisco CLUE Index data. We do require that proper Cisco attribution be given for any and all Cisco CLUE data that is published or shared in private or public print and electronic forms (for example, "Source: Cisco CLUE, 2010").
Q. Where can I ask questions about the Cisco CLUE Index?
