Contact Information: Press Contact: Alicia Swanson Cisco Systems, Inc. 408-836-7170 alswanso@cisco.com Investor Relations Contact: Marilyn Mora Cisco Systems, Inc. 408-527-7452 marilmor@cisco.com
Cisco Announces New Technology to Enhance the Retail Customer Experience
Cisco Helps Retailers Extend PCI Compliance, Reduce Store System Complexity and Increase Employee Productivity
| Source: Cisco Systems, Inc.
NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - January 14, 2008) - National Retail Federation Conference, Booth
2328 -- Cisco® (NASDAQ : CSCO ) today announced a series of new technology
solutions and multivendor architectures that will help retailers improve
security and reduce complexity of store systems in addition to increasing
employee productivity to enhance their customers' experience.
Cisco is launching the Lean Retail Architecture, a new way to help
retailers "do more with less," which features information technology (IT)
improvements designed to help retailers reduce costs, enhance business
flexibility and increase data protection. Additionally, Cisco is jointly
announcing the expansion of the Cisco Payment Card Industry (PCI) Validated Network Designs to the Internet edge and
data-center environments with NCR Corp.; RSA, the Security Division of EMC;
SAP®; VeriFone® and Verizon Business. Lastly, Cisco is working with
several software suppliers to create solutions that bolster retail employee
productivity and increase the amount of time that staff can spend with
customers, and continues to advance its Cisco Digital Media System for
digital signage and desktop video.
Lean Retail Architecture
Retailers are under constant pressure to increase profits by boosting sales
and controlling costs. Cisco's new Lean Retail Architecture allows stores
to save on operating and capital expenses by reducing IT complexity in the
store environment through data center consolidation.
"Cisco's Lean Retail Architecture offers retailers the opportunity to drive
down the cost of the daily operational IT maintenance and management," said
Jon Stine, director, Cisco Internet Business Solution Group, Retail. "By
migrating business-appropriate applications and servers out of stores and
into regional or central data centers, retailers can realize data
efficiency gains of up to 30 percent."
Cisco's Lean Retail Architecture enables retailers to reduce the monies
budgeted for fixing, updating or adding hardware and applications, and it
provides them with the ability to roll out new services quickly and
effectively. In addition, retailers can realize up to 70 percent greater
data storage efficiencies through server and storage virtualization. By
consolidating resources in the data center, retailers can expect to
decrease the need for additional server and storage purchases as well as
lower energy costs.
Another component of the Lean Retail Architecture is Cisco application
acceleration technologies that help enable retailers to move many
applications from stores to the data center without compromising
performance or security. With the ability to centralize business
information and data outside the store, retailers will have less to worry
about from a PCI-compliance standpoint.
PCI Compliance
Last year, Cisco introduced the Cisco Payment Card Industry Solution for
Retail, a set of PCI reference architectures designed to help retailers
manage the complexities associated with the PCI Data Security Standard.
Cisco is taking its PCI offering a step further by enhancing its design
recommendations to include the data center and Internet edge sites,
environments that many retailers must also commonly address under PCI to
protect customer and employee information as required by industry
regulations. The Cisco PCI Solution for Retail Validated Network Designs
has been tested and deployed in Cisco's labs as well as validated for both
the wired and wireless environment by an outside PCI auditor (QSA) Verizon
Business (formerly CyberTrust).
Cisco has also tested other retail technology solutions to minimize
infrastructure complexity and simplify integration with Cisco's
architectures and products. Relationships with NCR Corp.; RSA, the Security
Division of EMC; SAP; and VeriFone exemplify how technologies such as point
of sale and encryption can be incorporated to provide an end-to-end PCI
Solution for Retail.
"Retailers worldwide are under pressure to ensure that credit-card data is
protected within the store and data-center environments," said Jim Melvin,
vice president of marketing and security solutions at RSA. "RSA has
collaborated with Cisco to help retailers address many of the most complex
PCI requirements including authentication, data encryption and compliance
reporting. With our combined solutions we are not only able to help
retailers comply with today's requirements, but also to establish security
best practices and technologies that will help equip them to meet future
data security and compliance challenges."
Employee Productivity
Employee productivity is boosted by making time and attendance functions
accessible on Cisco Unified IP Phone touchscreen displays and by extending
some functions through Cisco Unified Communications voice services. Cisco
has tested this solution with Infor™ (formerly Workbrain), a leading
workforce-management application provider, to eliminate wasted time and
effort going back and forth from a dedicated timeclock device.
Additionally, Cisco is working with Reflexis Systems™, a leader in
retail execution management. Reflexis is taking advantage of the Cisco
Unified Application Environment to bring sophisticated task-management
capabilities to Cisco Unified IP Phones, allowing store managers and
employees to view their assignments, provide real-time status updates and
feedback, and proactively respond to alerts.
Cisco is bringing innovative networked digital media solutions to the store
environment. The Cisco Digital Media System is a flexible and comprehensive
solution for digital signage and desktop video. It enables retailers to
create, manage, publish and access high-quality digital media for
compelling customer and employee communications. In addition to being able
to market to and deliver an improved rich-media experience for customers,
retailers can use digital signage and desktop video to give employees easy
access to training, corporate updates and real-time messaging before or
after business hours. For more information about the Cisco Digital Media
System, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/dms.
Additionally, Cisco and IBM have also collaborated to develop the Expert
Advisor Kiosk solution that helps retailers put their customers in direct
and immediate contact with off-site experts. These off-site experts can
answer customer questions, provide customers with product recommendations,
then execute a warm transfer to an on-site sales representatives to
complete a purchase. IBM's AnyPlace Kiosk uses IBM's Consumer Device
Services middleware platform and monitoring software in combination with
Cisco's Unified Communications technology, helping deliver an end-to-end
solution that provides seamless, multi-channel access to product
information at the customer's point of decision.
To see demonstrations of Cisco's retail solutions at NRF, please visit
Cisco's booth 2328. For more information about Cisco's retail solutions,
visit www.cisco.com/go/retail.
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