Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota, the U.S. Department of Transportation.  It's no surprise why they were front and center at the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) World Congress which wrapped up in Detroit last week.   But, Cisco?

Barry Einsig, Cisco Global Transportation Executive and John Gillan, Sales Relationship Manager for Cisco Advanced Services prepare for a customer meeting at ITS World Congress.

"Reinventing Transportation in our Connected World" was the theme of this year's ITS World Congress, yet a question we heard all week was "what is Cisco doing here?"  As if right on cue, as the show came to a close, Connected World Magazine ranked Cisco as#1 on their prestigious Connected World CW 100 annual ranking of the top 100 elite technology leaders in connected devices.

Cisco has long been recognized as a leader in traditional IT and networking, but customers are starting to see how the Internet of Everything and the Internet of Things is driving a big transformation in transportation.  And, they trust Cisco to lead the way again.

Gary Coulter, a loyal customer from Simrex Corporation expressed just those sentiments saying "I personally feel that Cisco is a network leader, your team being here sets standards for the rest of the exhibitors. I look to Cisco to set the bar with emerging technologies and I have my clients ask for Cisco specifically by name. I want to become a reseller to ensure not only am I  getting access to all of the ruggedized things, but that I am giving the very best to my customers."

Many transportation systems have been in place for decades.  And, as more and more connections are needed, consolidating these aging and disparate proprietary networks into a single, more powerful IP network that supports the demand for greater mobility and connectivity is critical.   The Internet of Everything is about connecting people, processes, data, and things, with some of those "things" being ruggedized Cisco routers, switches, access points and video surveillance cameras used in transportation.

Andreas Mai, Director of Product Management for Cisco leads a strategic discussion at ITS World Congress in Detroit.

Cisco Connected Transportation solutions:

• Help improve safety and traffic flow with reduced roadside incidents
• Provide a centralized view of highway systems.
• Help enable Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2X) communications so vehicles can "talk" to each other and with traffic lights, roads, toll plazas, rail crossings and roadside cameras.
• Communicate real-time alerts such as weather, traffic, Amber alerts and emergency updates
• Provide greater collaboration between emergency and transit operators and agencies
• Help transportation agencies meet safety compliance requirements and regulations

More than 10,000 policymakers, elected officials, researchers, business leaders, and transportation engineers from around the world gathered last week in my home state of Michigan to hear about the latest in Intelligent Transportation and, Cisco was thrilled to be a part of it!

Wei Zou, Technical Marketing Engineer with Cisco demonstrates the Traffic Signal Prioritization solution

Cisco led sessions on smart parking, intelligent traffic intersections and the economics driving the future of connected cars as well as the Chief Technology Officer Summit for government and policy.

In Cobo Hall, we showed several demos and videos of our Connected Roadway solutions. Visitors were able to see what Cisco is doing with data management in transportation, traffic incident management, traffic signal prioritization, fleet management, virtualized mobile cloud and AutoGuard vehicle security.

Even though Cisco doesn't build the cars, the roads, or traffic lights, the question as to why we were in Detroit for ITS World Congress was answered loud and clear.   After all, a reliable and secure network is needed to connect all of those vehicles, roads, bridges, railways, sensors and devices.  And, nobody does that quite like Cisco.

It was an exciting week in the Motor City and I had fun sharing our vision of the future of transportation.   Despite a busy agenda, it was great to catch up with old friends for a few laughs and to spend a night in my hometown with family.  As a kid, there were many school field trips to the Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village and Detroit Auto Show.  The village I grew up in is dubbed "the hub of the highways", and there is an old mill on the riverbank that Henry Ford himself restored in 1935.   Maybe those transportation roots run deeper than I thought!

Next stop: Berlin, where we'll showcase Cisco Connected Rail solutions at InnoTrans September 23-26^th.

To learn more about Cisco Connected Roadways, watch the video

Or visit us on the web at:  www.,Cisco.com/go/connectedroadways