Cisco Names Winners of 'Think Inside the Box' Developer Contest

Worldwide Contest Showcases Innovative and Creative Business Applications Built on Best-Selling Router's Application Extension Platform

SAN JOSE, CA -- October 8, 2009 -- Today Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) announced the winners of its "Think Inside the Box" Developer Contest. Launched last fall, the competition challenged application developers around the world to develop applications that run on the Cisco(R) Application Extension Platform (AXP), which resides on the popular Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR).

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.