Cisco Enters SecondLife

Cisco officially launched in SecondLife today, and I was lucky enough to get there in time for the event at Cisco Systems (132,132,34) within SecondLife. I'll cover what was said, then talk about my take on things.

The meat of the event was this - excerpted from the text of the event:

Today, we’re proud to announce our Empowered Branch launch here on Second Life. The Empowered Branch is a key part a Cisco Campaign called Business Unlimited.

The cornerstone of the Empowered branch is the Integrated Services Router or ISR for short. The adoption of the ISR has been growing very quickly just like the population of Second Life. Also, like Second life, our Business Unlimited campaign is about helping our customers and partners unleash their potential – the same way second life citizens can realize their dreams.

We’re now building on the momentum of the award-winning, fastest selling router in history and providing a product that gives company branches the same infrastructure and services normally seen at enterprise headquarters.

There are several new integrated services router enhancements. If you’re a business, these enhancements enable you to integrate the latest voice, video, and data technologies into a single, scalable solution. They also enable you to adopt a cutting-edge security posture by leveraging the latest security technologies. You can also optimize Wide Area Network performance and increase Wide Area Network efficiency.

Other capabilities of this platform enable you to centralize critical assets and reduce the number of remotely managed assets in the branch while delivering seamless secure mobility. By combining multiple services onto a single device, you can lower total cost of ownership by up to 70%. And, if you’re a service provider, you can now provide a secure, standards-based end-to-end VPN solution. This solution combines the security of IPsec transport with the Traffic-Engineering capabilities and resiliency of an underlying MPLS network – all in an operationally simple delivery model. This revolutionary capability is called the Tunnelless VPN solution and it is based on Group Encrypted Transport Technology unique to Cisco - the only vendor that delivers this depth of integrated services on a router.

Many of you know that Cisco routers and switches have created the networks that power the Internet and enable many of you to connect with friends all over the world. Cisco continues to innovate and bring better ways for all of us to exchange ideas, and to connect with our customers, partners and friends.

At Cisco, we know that the network is not an end unto itself--its real purpose is to connect the people who utilize it and thus create a true Human Network.

The meat of this, of course, was the Integrated Services Router - but in the Q&A part, it seems that SecondLife will be used for Cisco Training (on their second island) and interacting with customers: the Cisco Network Academy program is being brought into the Second Life metaverse by offering extension classes to NetAcad instructors and students.

There was a lot of strong wording related to SecondLife and community. One of the more amusing questions asked was, "is the SL city council easier to deal with than the Fremont one?" - to which the response was 'no comment'. That sounds about right.

One person asked why a 'big press release' wasn't done - and the answer given was that they didn't want hypermedia attention, they wanted the right people to know about what they were doing. It looks promising; there apparently are a lot of real people from Cisco involved in this.

The Cisco Presence In SecondLife

When I arrived, I poked around and saw Banana Stein's name all over things - and there he was. The SLBrand team were around, in the background, making sure things went smoothly.

Unlike a lot of other sims, Cisco's presence loaded quickly and seemed focused on getting people in groups. They get points for that. And not launching a big press release campaign also gets points - the people who did show up were interested in Cisco (I am, I used to teach Microcomputer networking and Cisco's a big part of that).

There's plenty of video around, and information is there - literally - for the asking.

Will it last? I think so. And I'm very interested in the training aspect of this, as I expect many other people may be. Time will tell the realistic approach of Cisco in becoming a part of the greater SecondLife community sound good, but will it happen? Those interested in Cisco should find out at Cisco Systems (132,132,34)

You can see the pictures I took of the event here.