Overview


Note


For Cisco Spaces Release Notes from 2022 onwards, see Release Notes for Cisco Spaces.


Overview of Cisco Spaces

Cisco Spaces is a powerful location services platform that leverages the existing wireless as well as Internet of Things (IoT) and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) infrastructure to provide actionable insights and drive business outcomes through built-in applications in Cisco Spaces.

These insights include:

  • Location Analytics: Provides the capability to slice and dice location data by time or location and get a deeper visibility into the behavior of users who are connected to your network.

  • Right Now: Provides a real-time count of the number of visitors (identified by the devices connected to Wi-Fi) within your physical space, and how this number compares with the historical average. Based on the authentication method that is in use, Right Now reports can detect multiple devices belonging to a single user and count them as belonging to one visitor. The Right Now app also provides reports based on the cameras deployed in customer locations, and whether these cameras are connected to the Cisco Spaces Cloud.

  • Business Insights: Provides the capability to measure how frequently people visit your physical locations, and how much time they spend at these locations. This data is benchmarked monthly across all the locations. It also provides the capability to compare and benchmark the performance of your locations historically, by group or by industry.

  • Impact Analysis: Provides the capability to measure the impact of at-location events, campaigns, and layout changes on the behavior of users who are connected to your network. It is easy to create an Event using the Cisco Spaces application and measure its impact based on the following:

    • The time spent by a user at a given location

    • The frequency during specific timelines, such as Before, After, and During the occurrence of an event

The Cisco Spaces application includes customer experience management apps such as Captive Portals, Location Personas, and Engagements that allow you to connect with your customers in real time when they are at your physical location. Additional applications include an Asset Tracking app, a service manager to manage and configure IoT services (BLE), if any, as well as an open API framework for extracting this data and correlating or integrating it into other enterprise systems.

Cisco Spaces provides a single dashboard interface to avail these multiple services through various location-based technologies and intelligence. Cisco Spaces also enables you to connect and engage with visitors at your physical business locations. It can be used in various industries, such as retail, manufacturing, hospitality, healthcare, education, financial services, and so on. The asset-tracking application in Cisco Spaces provides solutions for monitoring and managing the assets in your premises. Cisco Spaces offers variety of toolkits, apps, and APIs to turn these insights into actions.

Through its partner program, Cisco Spaces offers businesses access to various partner applications across verticals.

Cisco Spaces is compatible across Cisco Catalyst, Cisco AireOS, and Cisco Meraki infrastructure.

In addition to the services specified, the scope of the Cisco Spaces apps is extended to meet the business requirements that have risen due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Extensions are built in existing applications, and newer applications are added to meet specific requirements that have risen because of COVID-19. Extensions to apps, such as Impact Analytics, Location Analytics, Behavior Metrics, and Right Now, allow you to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on your business locations and enable you to take appropriate actions. For example, you can now create a rule based on the device density at your location, and be automatically notified if the number of people at your location exceeds a specific count or density (people per area). The Location Analytics app also allows you to share executive summary reports with your colleagues within your organization. Additionally, COVID-19-based trend analysis for individual or group locations can now be done using the Behavior Metrics app. This enables the comparison of specific business locations with that of the overall organization as well as with your specific industry.

The Proximity Reporting app in Cisco Spaces provides a quick way to review the location history as well as device proximity history of an impacted device. Based on the user ID or MAC address, a report for a device location in a building for the last 14 days is generated along with the proximity of other devices. You can export the report and also share the same using the Share functionality. For more information about the Proximity Reporting app, see the Cisco Spaces Proximity Reporting App Configuration Guide.

Similarly, the Detect and Locate app allows you to cluster devices into specific counts to check and report on areas that might be violating social distancing guidelines. For more information about the Detect and Locate app, see the Cisco Spaces Detect and Locate Configuration Guide.

Cisco Spaces: IoT Services is a platform service within Cisco Spaces that enables you to claim, manage, and monitor IoT devices using Cisco's wireless infrastructure. IoT Services is designed to enable the management of IoT devices across vendors, form factors, and technology protocols. BLE is the first technology available for management using IoT Services. For more information about IoT Services, see the Cisco Spaces IoT Services Configuration Guide.

Cisco Spaces enables you to integrate third-party apps - Partner Apps to Cisco Spaces. The third-party apps are listed as partnership apps in the Cisco Spaces dashboard.

For additional information about Cisco Spaces, including setup and configuration, see the Cisco Spaces Configuration Guide.

Cisco Spaces License Packages

Cisco Spaces is available in three different license packages, namely, See (Base), Act (Advance), and Extend. The features available for your account depends on the type of Cisco Spaces license package you own.

For information about features included in the Cisco Spaces See, Extend, and Act licenses, see the Cisco Spaces Data Sheet.

Cisco 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.


Note


To use Smart Licensing, you must first set up a Smart Account on Cisco Software Central.


For more information about Cisco Licensing, see Cisco Software Licensing Guide.

Cisco Spaces - Product Capabilities

Cisco Spaces unified location cloud takes input from multiple sensors and processes, filters and cleanses the data, provides toolkits to act on this data and also makes this data accessible to partners - Independent Software vendors, enterprise software as well as solution partners for delivering business outcomes.

Table 1. Additional Benefits
See - Business Insights Extend - To Partner Services Act - On Digitization Toolkits

Behavior metrics

How are people and assets behaving in my property?

Partner App Center

Discover vertically focused, location-based services applications through the Cisco Spaces App Center

Captive portal

Acquire and identify visitors and map to enterprise identity

Location analytics

What are behavior patterns in specific locations and time periods?

Partner Firehose API

Deliver reliable, high quality location, environmental, and visitor data to partners, with strong enforcement of user privacy and data security

Location personas

Profile and segment visitors based on behavior

Benchmarks

Compare performance with industries and organizations

Partner App monitoring

End-to-end monitoring of location data from the premise the partner app

Monitoring and support for Partner Apps via the Monitoring and Support dashboard

Engagements

Trigger notifications to visitors and employees via multiple channels (SMS, email, app push, API trigger, Webex Teams, etc.)

Location hierarchy

Map business taxonomy to network infrastructure

Streaming data export

Customizable streaming export optimized to support ingestion into Big Data, Analytics, and Enterprise Applications

Asset Locator

Identify and monitor assets, detect anomalies

Detect and Locate (RSSI)

Cloud based Detect and Locate and RSSI location compute

On-premises Detect and Locate and RSSI location compute using Cisco CMX 10

Enterprise Integrations

Integrate with enterprise software to correlate with location data

Detect and Locate (Advanced)

1. Cloud based Detect and Locate and RSSI location compute with device location history

2. Cloud Based Detect and Locate with Hyperlocation support

Right now (without density triggers)

Monitor the number of people and devices in your spaces

Specialized RTLS app support

Support for specialized partner RTLS applications using cloud and on- premise Firehose APIs

Right now (with density triggers)

Monitor the number of people in your spaces and send notifications when density thresholds are reached or exceeded

Impact Analysis

Measure the impact of events, campaigns, or layout changes on location behavior

Includes everything in Cisco Spaces See

Proximity reporting

Summarize impact of a health incident across zones, floors, buildings, and potential interactions with other people

Cisco Catalyst Center (formerly known as Cisco DNA Center) Integration

Keep floor maps and hierarchy in sync between Cisco Spaces and Catalyst Center and send location data to Catalyst Center for IT use cases

Indoor IoT Services

Deploy IoT devices and applications at scale and at significantly lower TCO. Deploy a broad spectrum of BLE tags, beacons, and other sensors to expand use cases

Camera Metrics

Report counts of footfall and historical trends as a measure of real-time visitor count, with Meraki Video Cameras.

Hyperlocation / FastLocate

Works with Cisco Spaces Connector

OpenRoaming

Secure, seamless guest onboarding onto wired and Wi-Fi networks

Includes everything in Cisco Spaces Extend