Cisco busy connecting communities

Hai Van talks with Cisco’s emerging markets services director Caspar Herzberg about how the country can be involved in the information technology  supported project.

How is the smart and connected communities project (S+CC) being executed in Vietnam?

We are now working on S+CC with property developers on large-scale residential in Ho Chi Minh City and we have joined M&C Corporation for its tower development in helping it build smart and connected towers with the support of IT networks to deliver a lot of services for residents. We have a commercial contract with it and we are working on delivering and supporting it to develop advanced infrastructure.

How can property developers be picked to execute S+CC blueprint?

We did not choose them. We went to Korea because we knew that they were investing a lot into connected smart communities. Actually then, real state business developers and leaders from Vietnam and the Philippines expressed interested in our showcase of S+CC in Korea.

They are interested in the vision and they want to create something that fulfills the need of their customers. So we work with them to create new set-up services. Frankly, they choose to doing that is because they think it’s commercially interesting thing to do. Luckily for us, we see a number of very exciting developments coming across the Philippines, Vietnam and elsewhere.

How is the adoption of S+CC in Southeast Asia?

It’s really good compared with other regions. We did it in the Middle East, we went to Korea, from Korea we went to China, where we have been doing specific, very large-scale deals and we have been doing a lot of smaller deals across Asia, such as in the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia.

n that respect, the Philippines have been an ideal place for us, from a globalisation point of view like BRIC countries [Brazil, Russia, India and China]. But then we realise we can actually find the opportunities in the Philippines and Vietnam, where specific fields like real estate are developing rapidly.