LAS VEGAS -- Since it was announced on Tuesday, Cisco System's Cius business tablet has provoked questions over how it will be used, especially when compared with the larger-screen AppleiPad .
The Cius tablet from Cisco Systems on its docking station
Cisco is clearly targeting its traditional base of large business IT shops and not the broader market that iPad plays into, according to comments by Cisco executives at the company's Cisco Live! conference here.
In an interview, one of the tablet's principle designers provided more details on the Cius. He described it as having strong potential as a thin-client desktop device to replace a knowledge worker's desktop phone, laptop and desktop computer, with the added functionality of video and videoconferencing.
"Thin clients are still big, and lots of [ enterprise ] customers are really interested in that," said Barry O'Sullivan, senior vice president of Cisco's voice technology group who was involved in the Cius design from the start, 18 months ago.
"We started by thinking about it first as ... a mobile video device, since customers said 'we love video,' " O'Sullivan said. "But there was another market transition [underway] and we wondered if this could be a thin client on the desktop as well."
O'Sullivan also revealed that the device will come with three different docking stations, all with charging capabilities for the removable tablet. The largest dock will have a traditional phone handset with a cord on the side in addition to sound and charging, while a smaller one will have sound and charging capabilities, and a third even smaller one will have charging capabilities only. Pricing for each unit is expected to be less than $1,000, he said.
The Cius, which is expected to ship in the first quarter of 2011, will also be sold with a separate case that can be used in rugged settings such as warehouses. The case also provides additional battery power.
O'Sullivan said added security features would make the Cius intriguing to IT managers, and the thin-client model might be more appealing since it can empower IT shops that want to lower costs and beef up security.
Thin clients operate by having applications reside on a centralized server, with the applications served up as needed to thin clients. This means user devices could be locked down by the IT shop, depending on a company's needs for security. The IT department could also limit the number of apps on a user's machine, since too many apps running can bog down a network and servers with data not essential to a company.
"There are already lots of thin clients out there, and with financial services there's huge interest, as well as in the public sector," O'Sullivan said. He said many large enterprises have come to Cisco in recent years asking for such a device.
With Cius thin clients running in such operations, IT shops also can locate applications in the cloud instead of servers on premises, O'Sullivan said.