CSCO:Cisco Opens S$3 million Customer Briefing Center in Singapore

Cisco® has established a state-of-the-art customer briefing center (CBC) in Singapore to showcase the latest innovations in Internet Protocol (IP) networking technology. The CBC also provides Cisco's Asia Pacific channel partners and customers with a live environment to test their solutions in multiple operating environments.

As part of Cisco's iP3 (interaction across people, private and public enterprise) agreement with Singapore's Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), the CBC will also enable Singaporean technology companies to test applications they have developed for interoperability with Cisco's extensive range of networking solutions. These companies can also showcase their own solutions at the CBC, potentially opening up opportunities with Cisco's regional partners and customers.

The Singapore CBC was inaugurated today by IDA's chairman, Lam Chuan Leong, and Cisco's president for the Asia Pacific region, Owen Chan. Also present at the opening ceremony were Chan Yeng Kit, chief executive officer of IDA Singapore, and Craig Gledhill, Cisco's managing director for Singapore and Brunei.

"IDA welcomes collaborative efforts with industry leaders, like Cisco, to help develop the Singapore infocomm industry in the area of next-generation networking technologies. The CBC will provide an environment for local infocomm players to test their solutions before bringing them to market," said Mr Chan Yeng Kit, CEO of IDA.

"The network is increasingly becoming the center of all communications and IT. The expanding role of the network builds on the end-to-end and architecture-based differentiation that Cisco has been investing in for many years. The Singapore CBC will showcase many of these technologies," said Gledhill.

Highlights of the Singapore CBC include two Cisco TelePresence rooms, two demonstration areas, and two media walls with rich multimedia content. Singaporean companies can make use of the Cisco TelePresence rooms to meet "virtually" with Cisco's partners and customers around the world, thus saving them the expense and time of traveling to those countries.

Said Andre Smit, Cisco's senior director of technical operations in Asia Pacific, whose team manages the facility: "The Singapore CBC provides a strong customer proof of concept of the ability of Cisco's technologies and solutions to transform businesses. The wide variety of advanced technologies that the CBC is equipped with also demonstrates Cisco's technology leadership and open and collaborative approach."

The demonstration pods in the CBC can be used individually or collectively to showcase technologies across different locations or environments.

On display are a number of Cisco's advanced technologies - including unified communications, security and wireless - with examples of how they can help customers increase business growth, agility, efficiency and productivity.