General and capabilities
Q. What is Cisco Spaces, and what is the value customers get?
A. Cisco Spaces is a cloud-based location services platform. Through Cisco
® wireless infrastructure, organizations can gain insights into how people and things move throughout their physical spaces. With these insights, they can deliver contextual engagements that are valuable and relevant. Besides looking at where people go, organizations can also drive operational efficiencies by monitoring the location, movement, and utilization of assets.
Cisco Spaces can drive top- and bottom-line impact across multiple industries. For example, retail and hospitality organizations can use the engagement toolkits to increase customer visits, revenues, and satisfaction. Through effective asset management, healthcare or workspace customers can save time and costs, and improve their productivity.
Q. If I want Asset Locator and I buy a Cisco Spaces Act license (by the access point), how many devices (tags) am I allowed to track under that one AP license?
A. You will receive unlimited tags.
Q. What is Cisco Spaces Indoor IoT Services, and what use cases are supported?
A. Indoor IoT Services helps customers deploy IoT devices and applications easily, rapidly, at scale, and at a significantly lower total cost of ownership. It leverages the Cisco Catalyst
® 9100 Access Points, powered by the Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers, to enable customers to deploy a broad spectrum of Bluetooth low energy (BLE) asset tags, beacons, and other sensors. This expands the use cases for asset management, environmental monitoring, employee safety, wayfinding, and more.
Business resiliency
Q. How can Cisco Spaces support safe reopening of workplaces and campuses?
A. Cisco Spaces has a range of built-in apps that can be used. The Right Now app allows workplace services to monitor the real-time number of people in buildings and set density thresholds.
If an individual self-reports as positive for the virus, the Proximity Reporting app facilitates investigation by summarizing impact across employees, floors, and buildings.
These apps do not require a mobile application or additional hardware. Customers with Cisco wireless access points can activate and leverage these apps with Cisco Spaces.
Q. How can Cisco Spaces be used to deliver both personalized and contactless experiences?
A. The Engagements app allows enterprises to share contextual safety information with employees based on their presence at any of the buildings.
Dynamic engagements are powered by a rule engine based on at-location behavior and personas, which can be defined through the Location Personas app.
Cisco Spaces vs. Cisco CMX
Q. How is Cisco Spaces different from Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX)?
A. CMX was a family of products built around Cisco location technology and consisting of both on-premises and cloud offerings (CMX on-premises, cloud location compute, etc.). July Systems built a proven, scalable, cloud location-based services platform that powered, among other things, the CMX Engage product. Cisco Spaces brings the best of the CMX and July Systems platforms into a single, unified location cloud. Cisco Spaces also includes CMX on-premises. Cisco Spaces dramatically simplifies both licensing and the consumption model.
Q. How long can I run CMX without being forced to go to Cisco Spaces? What about on-premises?
A. CMX capabilities and software are being integrated into Cisco Spaces. For continuous innovation, we recommend migrating to Cisco Spaces. The on-premises component of Cisco Spaces is the CMX location engine. This component can calculate the location of devices for use with internal systems without connection to the cloud. Without the cloud, however, you will not have the full breadth of location insights or a captive portal.
30-day free trial
Q. What do I get when I sign up for the free trial?
A. Cisco Spaces uses your existing wireless infrastructure to collect, measure, standardize, and benchmark location data. After signing up, you will receive your own dashboard login and see the following types of insights:
● How many people or things are connecting to Wi-Fi at your properties
● Your visitor behavior, such as average duration and visit frequency
● Comparisons and benchmarks of your location data (historically or by group)
Q. Who is eligible for the free trial?
A. Any existing Cisco or Cisco Meraki
® wireless customer is eligible for the free trial of Cisco Spaces.
Q. When does the free trial end?
A. The free trial will end after 30 days.
Licensing and ordering
Q. How is Cisco Spaces ordered?
A. It can be ordered as a standalone subscription, which comes in three tiers: See, Extend, and Act. It can also be ordered as part of a Cisco DNA Advantage or Premier subscription, or via upgrade and migration offers.
Q. Is ordering the same for Cisco Spaces regardless of whether I choose on-premises or cloud?
A. Yes, ordering is through the same SKU. On-premises can be installed on a VM or using a Cisco 3375 Appliance for Cisco Mobile Experiences (purchased separately).
Q. Will Cisco Spaces See, Extend, and Act be orderable a la carte, meaning unbundled from Cisco DNA Wireless licensing?
A. Yes.
Deployment and configuration
Q. What Cisco hardware does Cisco Spaces support?
A. Cisco Spaces supports all Cisco wireless infrastructure, including Meraki, Aironet
®, and Cisco Catalyst
®, and is forward and backward compatible. Depending on your infrastructure, we have a way to connect you to Cisco Spaces cloud. When you sign up, you will receive a setup guide to get you started.
Q. What are the prerequisites for deploying Cisco Spaces?
A. Cisco Spaces is a cloud-based solution, and there is no physical installation involved. However, you must first define the required hierarchy structure in your wireless network, such as Cisco Catalyst, Aironet, or Meraki. To establish a connection between Cisco Spaces and your wireless network, Cisco Spaces asks you to provide the login credentials to connect to that wireless network.
For some Aironet networks that are not cloud based, you may have to open the required ports to establish a connection between your wireless network and Cisco Spaces. You can establish this connection through a public IP or VPN. In addition, you may have to whitelist certain Cisco Spaces IP addresses.
In addition, for deployments that require on-premises x, y location or hyperlocation calculations, you will need to deploy a CMX location appliance.
Q. What are the deployment options?
A. Deployment options include cloud plus on-premises or completely cloud. On-premises is required for hyperlocation compute functionality.
Q. How can I connect to the cloud? Does Cisco Spaces work with Meraki, Wireless LAN Controllers (WLCs), and CMX on-premises?
A. Yes. There are five ways to connect to the cloud:
◦ Cisco Spaces Connector
◦ WLC direct connect – WLC version 8.8 MR2, Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series, eWLC 16.10
◦ On-premises tethering (CMX version 10.6)
◦ Meraki cloud: No connector needed
Q. Is on-premises going away and everything moving to the cloud? If not, what features are being carried over from on-premises?
A. Current on-premises customers can continue to use an on-premises deployment. In addition, Cisco Spaces includes a cloud tethering option so that you will have an option to connect to the Cisco Spaces cloud. You do not have to purchase on-premises separately, as it comes bundled with Cisco Spaces. The only customers that need to deploy on-premises are those doing location compute.
Indoor IoT Services
Q. What is Cisco Spaces Indoor IoT Services?
A. This industry-first indoor IoT-as-a-service offering will help customers deploy IoT devices and applications easily, rapidly, at scale, and at a significantly lower TCO. Indoor IoT Services works with the Catalyst 9100 access points to enable customers to deploy a broad spectrum of BLE tags, beacons, and other sensors, expanding use cases including asset management, environmental monitoring, wayfinding, and more.
Q. What are the benefits?
A. With Indoor IoT Services, Cisco Spaces breaks silos and provides an open and unified platform for multiple apps and devices. Customers can deploy their devices and use cases at significantly greater scale. A unified support model with the partner apps and device vendors helps ensure proactive problem resolution and end-to-end visibility.
Introduction to Smart Licensing
Cisco Smart Licensing is a flexible licensing model that provides you with an easier, faster, and more consistent way to purchase and manage software across the Cisco portfolio and across your organization. And it’s secure – you control what users can access. With Smart Licensing you get:
● Easy Activation: Smart Licensing establishes a pool of software licenses that can be used across the entire organization—no more PAKs (Product Activation Keys).
● Unified Management: My Cisco Entitlements (MCE) provides a complete view into all of your Cisco products and services in an easy-to-use portal, so you always know what you have and what you are using.
● License Flexibility: Your software is not node-locked to your hardware, so you can easily use and transfer licenses as needed.
To use Smart Licensing, you must first set up a Smart Account on Cisco Software Central (software.cisco.com).
For a more detailed overview on Cisco Licensing, go to cisco.com/go/licensingguide