Q&A
Cisco Connected Factory Solution
Q. What is the Cisco® Connected Factory Solution?
A.
The Cisco Connected Factory Solution is a portfolio of industrial-specific products including switching and
routing, wireless, data center, security, telephony, and video. These products are combined with Cisco
Validated Designs (CVD) and Cisco services to help partners address the unique needs of their manufacturing
customers seeking to join Operational Technology (OT) systems with Information Technology (IT).
This convergence of OT and IT is critical to enabling advanced business processes that connect people,
places, data, and things across the entire manufacturing value chain.
The Cisco Connected Factory Solution is focused on discrete manufacturing customers, such as those in auto,
equipment, and consumer-packaged-goods [CPG] industries.
Q. How is the Cisco Connected Factory Solution different from standard industrial automation solutions?
A.
Cisco is the only vendor that provides an end-to-end architecture, from the factory to the enterprise, enabling
the following benefits over other vendor solutions:
●
Investment protection: Our industrial product roadmap supports longer product lifecycles, enabling a
sustainable solution for customers, reducing complexity today and providing continuity and investment
protection as the solution evolves.
●
Integrated and validated solution: Cisco offers a validated end-to-end architecture, providing you and your
customers with faster time to deployment, investment protection, and reduced risk.
●
Unmatched warranty protection: Cisco’s industrial product portfolio offers the industry’s only 5-year
warranty. (HW only).
●
Best-in-class security: Cisco provides a stable, highly secure, and robust platform to facilitate the secure
deployment of new business models.
Q. When will the Cisco Connected Factory Solution be available?
A.
It is available now.
© 2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
Page 1 of 3
Cisco Connected Factory Solution Products
Q. What products are being sold as part of the Cisco Connected Factory Solution?
A.
The solution consists of industrial-specific components including switching and routing, wireless, data center,
security, telephony, and video. The specific products in the portfolio include:
●
Cisco Catalyst® 2955 Series Switches
●
Cisco Industrial Ethernet 3000 Series Switches
●
Cisco Industrial Ethernet 3010 Series Switches
●
Cisco Industrial Ethernet 2000 Series Switches
●
Cisco Aironet® 2602e and Aironet 1552 Access Points
●
Cisco 819 Integrated Services Router
●
Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7925G-EX (Atmospheres Explosives [ATEX] Zone 2 certified phone)
This portfolio enables the integration of production automation with business systems into a common,
standards-based Ethernet network platform.
Q. What technology platform does the Cisco Connected Factory Solution use?
A.
It uses industry-standard TCP/IP, Wi-Fi, and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for communications, and it
supports industrial protocols such as Ethernet and IP, PROFINET, ISA100, and WirelessHART.
Q. What Services can be sold as part of the Cisco Connected Factory Solution?
A.
Use our attractively priced Connected Factory Starter Kit to offer customers a limited converged factory,
wireless architecture in their own plant. The Starter Kit demonstrates the reliability and scalability of a common
network platform as well as production optimization with improved connectivity and analytics. This is a starting
point for a factory-wide network deployment. Our portfolio of services cover the plan, build, manage solution
lifecycle and continually align outcomes to business goals from strategy through execution:
●
Connected Factory Architectural Roadmap
●
Connected Factory Micro Engagement
●
Connected Factory Starter Kit
●
Connected Factory Design and Build Service
●
Solution Optimization Service
●
Product Support Service
Partner Resources
Q. What resources are available to partners to sell, service, and support the Cisco Connected Factory Solution?
A.
Comprehensive sales and technical enablement can be found as part of the Cisco Advanced IoT
Specialization in Manufacturing (http://www.cisco.com/go/iotpartner). The e-learning courses (sales and
presales) are located on the Cisco PEC (http://www.cisco.com/go/pec).
© 2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
Page 2 of 3
Printed in USA
© 2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
C67-733323-00
11/14
Page 3 of 3