Cisco Launches Cius Android Tablet for Business

Cisco did not reveal a timeline or a price for the new tablet, which appears to be the first Android tablet, at least, designed primarily for business. (The Camangi WebStation is another 7-inch Android tablet with a consumer focus.)

Unlike other tablets, Cisco said that the Cius (pronounced cee-us) was designed for and is bundled with Cisco technologies designed for mobile business, including the ability to take 720p video in conjunction with the Cisco Telepresence solution. The tablet also comes bundled with Cisco Quad, Cisco Show and Share, WebEx, Presence, and an instant-messenger app.

"You can slowly migrate to cloud computing by deploying business tablets to executives, sales representatives and knowledge workers and then expand mobility across your entire enterprise," Cisco said. "Instead of bringing employees to where the work is, you can bring the work to where the employees are."

But what's more unclear about the Cius, besides basic questions regarding when it will come to market and how much Cisco will charge, are more IT-oriented concerns about remote-wipe and -kill features now increasingly common to enterprise notebooks. It also appears that the Cisco Cius could serve as part of an existing VOIP solution, but how isn't exactly clear. Moreover, the Cius would seem to assume that any and all enterprise apps must either live on the Web in a Webkit-accessible format, or an enterprise would have to devote resources to recoding them for Android.