|
TONY WALTHAM
Cisco Systems last week launched its "Network on Wheels," a 12-metre mobile showcase in a retro-fitted shipping container that the company developed after the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.
Part of its role is to be on standby to help out in the event of a disaster while the other is to introduce the company's networking solutions along with those of partners to small and medium businesses.
The container was part of the ICT Expo 2007 exhibition at Impact Arena last week and it will continue on to tour parts of the country, visiting various locations in Bangkok as well as making stops in Hat Yai, Phuket, Chon Buri and Khon Kaen between now and December 21.
Over the period of a year, the Cisco Express-Network on Wheels, as the mobile showcase is known in full, will travel to 30 cities in six countries, having started out from Singapore. After Thailand, the unit will visits Malaysia and after that Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan and the Philippines.
Taking over 18 months to create, the container is packed with equipment from Cisco and some of its partners, addressing unified communications, security and mobility, data centre solutions, IP-based video surveillance, digital media signage while showcasing special capabilities for emergency communications, including the capability to bridge VHF or UHF radio communications between networks using different radio frequencies.
Regional sponsors include CNA, which offers building automation solutions, EMC with its storage solutions, Emerson Network Power, Linksys, Panduit cabling and SingTel. Local Thai sponsors are MFEC, Synnex (Thailand), Shin Satellite, NetOne and Nevotex.
SMBs contributed 50 percent of Thailand's GDP, explained Cisco's channel, marketing and commercial sales director Christian Hentschel, and the solutions in this vehicle, which also doubles as a customer briefing centre, were geared to such customers.
"To SMB owners we say 'imagine that this is your office'," explained Hentschel, noting that the mobile unit was a mirror of a customer briefing centre in Singapore. He added that a second mobile unit would go on the road next February.
Containing a generator that is able to run for up to two days and representing a $1 million investment, the unit embodied the latest emerging technologies around physical security and IP-based video surveillance, Hentschel said.
This vehicle complements Thailand's own emergency/education communication vehicle developed by Nectec and it typically connects to the Internet over satellite.
Solutions on board include iComm, an emergency response solution that can provide mobile communications anywhere at any time and weighs less than 90kg while using less than 600 watts of power. iComm can become operational in less than 10 minutes and includes IP telephony, analogue phones, fax, voicemail and radio and can extend the range of fixed infrastructure to any area under any conditions.
Complementing this is an IP interopreability collaboration system (IPICS), a family of products and applications suited to public safety organisations enabling personnel within the same or different agencies to communicate across previously isolated radio, IP and non-IP networks.
IPICS allows UHF or VHF radio communications to be fully integrated into IP unified communications.
While touring Thailand over a six-week period, the Cisco Express-NoW will be staffed by students from Cisco Networking Academy institutions in the cities where it will stop over, providing them with practical learning experiences.
The vehicle will be in Hat Yai this coming weekend, then Phuket (Nov 29-30), in Chon Buri (Dec 3-4), Khon Kaen (Dec 11-13) and then it's back to Bangkok (Dec 17-21) before leaving for Malaysia. It is scheduled to return to Thailand in June 2008.
| 
