Struggling with its financial state, multi-national producers of electronics and communications technology Cisco is trying to rekindle the fire that once burned so bright. With Juniper Networks’ aggressive moves for the first two months of 2011, including its recent launch of QFabric, Cisco is now looking at a larger scale and connecting cities turning them into networked hubs.

Following the announcement of the initiative at Green Cities conference in San Francisco, Wim Elfrink, Cisco’s chief globalization officer and EVP said in an interview, “From a technology point of view, potentially everything is possible. But we have to find out price points and bundles. Some general rules apply: Cisco has seen so-called “triple play” phone-cable-Internet type offerings being the most popular, with home energy awareness and security generally taking second place.”

As homes and enterprises are going green, Cisco thought of a way to interconnect various home living features and promote efficiency through constant monitoring of consumption. The goal of this project is to support residents’ needs and deliver real cost and energy reductions. The objective will be targeted via technology from varied channels like networking and telepresence or even cloud services platform. In fact, Cisco is teaming up with Korea Telecoms to construct PaaS or platform as a service. Connected cities will focus on urban mobility, distance learning, energy management, and safety and security.

Cisco’s connected city goes from East to West with participating cities: Amsterdam, Bangalore, Barcelona, San Francisco, and the South Korean cities of Incheon and Busan. The International forum being held in San Fo from February 23^rd-25^th and plans to give breaks to those talented citizens and students. Amidst the preparation for the program launches, Cisco visibly expands video collaboration portfolio.