As we look at simplicity and automation beyond IT users down to OT users, we have an innovation project called Glance to enable workplace automation. GLANCE is a cloud application that will help our customers automate tracking devices, assets, experts based on their location, status, and expertise.
Glance is built on Cisco infrastructure, leveraging CMX technology and using existing facility maps. For example, at a trade show, you could track down subject matter experts on the show floor to set up some time for them to meet with a sales prospect! In future, GLANCE will provide a complete indoor navigation application for people, robots, and drones.
Workplace experience is top of mind for our customers, and this is a real technology that can be integrated into a solution that delivers a valuable business outcome to our customer. This is definitely a LoB conversation you can have with the head of marketing, IT, HR, or finance/operations.
The project Glance started off with the following questions in mind. How can we use CMX services to help the end user gain more insights or actions using CMX? We first built a simple prototype to showcase, the path the users took at events such as Cisco Live. This helped them understand the actual show floor and how they can be more efficient in navigating all the show-booths.
After this, we worked on a Vision of building Glance as a service layer application. Glance now is service layer application that uses several external services such as CMX, devIoT as inputs. The architecture itself is broken into three layers starting at the bottom, External services, Backend Services and the User Interface.
In the backend service, we have written a robust framework to use CMX API for both GET Client APIs as well as Notification APIs.
At Cisco Live, we built an application that allows experts to check-in via their mobile devices. Once they check in they are displayed on the dashboard. As a customer walks in he/she can interact with the dashboard and see where the expert is on the floor. They have an option to find them via the search functionality and once seen can communicate with them via SMS or via Jabber.
Glance is deployed as a multitenant cloud application. On it’s south bound interface, it has the ability to connect to the MSE which can be deployed on-premise or to MSE which is deployed as Service. It has user and device management which all allows
Glance to map user to their Mac addresses. Also as it is an Cloud application, it has the ability to scale horizontally as more devices come online.
Glance has multiple applications that it can be used in. For starters it can be used in Events as described above. It can be used in Hospital management applications where they are in need of finding doctors, nurses, ward matrons etc. There are a lot of applications that can be enabled in the manufacturing floor space. Finally application like calendaring can be integrated to for campus scenarios.
