Cisco launched this contest to encourage collaborative development through the use of Web 2.0 technologies, promoting what Cisco calls the Human Network Effect. The winning teams were determined by a panel of seven industry experts who selected the following applications as the most innovative, implementable and relevant to businesses. More than 100 qualified teams from 75 countries entered the competition. The finalists demonstrated the business relevance of the AXP in solving real-world problems, in areas of unified communications, security, advertising, cloud architectures and energy management.

Highlights / Key Facts:

The Winners:

The panel of seven judges narrowed the 100 submissions down to eight finalists. You can view the demos of their applications here. The criteria for selection were innovation, effective use of the AXP platform, feasibility, and project plan documentation. From those finalists, the following winners were selected:

--   First Place: Team MADnetwork, led by David Perez in Spain, won
US$50,000 for the Building Automation Service application (BAS). Created
with branch offices and multitenant units in mind, BAS helps businesses
remotely monitor and manage building operations.

By integrating the service management capabilities on AXP, the application
minimizes the need for external servers to manage disparate facilities
(HVAC, lighting, plumbing, presence, fire, flooding and smoke detectors),
which reduces capital and operational costs. The solution also saves energy
costs by determining, in real time, which resources are being consumed, and
to what degree, by working with a remote management solution.

--   Second Place: Team Enhancers, led by Rajesh Kotagiri in India,
won US$30,000 for the Local Advertising Mesh Network Platform (LAMP)
application. LAMP creates a distributed ad-serving platform hosted on the
AXP. This platform will reside on ISRs targeted initially toward retail
deployments: For instance, retail stores can display ads on LCD units in
various locations. With this solution, businesses can tap potential new
revenue streams by shifting some of their advertising efforts to their
existing networking infrastructures. 

--   Third Place: Team BugsBernie, led by Bernhard Beckmann in
Germany, won US$20,000 for the Integrated Surveillance System application.
With this application, Internet Protocol phones can be turned on during
nonworking hours to monitor any audio signals in the offices. When abnormal
audio signal patterns are detected (crossing a configurable threshold), the
application notifies external security services or devices such as mobile
phones, computers and video monitoring systems. Sabotage of telephony
equipment is also detected.

The Integrated Surveillance System is a simple and cost-effective means to
enable a security solution in branch offices by taking advantage of an
existing IP-telephony network.