Cisco IoT Control Center Overview

Key benefits: Scalability, Lower TCO, Customer experience, Flexibility, and Security

Control Center is an industry-leading SaaS platform that simply, automatically, and securely delivers the visibility and control enterprises need to launch, scale, and manage their Internet-of-Things (IoT) services worldwide. Connecting thousands or millions of devices to achieve meaningful business results can be complex and costly. Thousands of enterprises across multiple industries rely on Control Center to transform themselves from a product-based business to a recurring revenue service business, with powerful capabilities to scale profitably and address critical challenges in managing their IoT solutions. Enterprises around the globe use Control Center to:

Automate scale and accelerate time to revenue. Rapidly deploy new connected services with Control Center’s zero-touch provisioning and configurable automation rules. Leverage Control Center’s multi-operator framework and global SIM support to scale services to other global markets and accelerate time to revenue, for IoT deployments of any size.

Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Reduce recurring costs with 24-hour daily real-time usage monitoring, diagnostics, and self-support features that automate connectivity management and troubleshooting and reduce manual processes.

Achieve exceptional service reliability and customer experience. Help to ensure the highest level of service reliability and exceed customer expectations by significantly reducing mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR) on service issues through Control Center’s powerful, remote diagnostics and analytics capabilities.

Accommodate flexible business models and deployments. Choose the type of service for each device (voice, data, SMS) and automatically assign the usage and billing models to plan types, such as: recurring, prepaid, individual, pooled, location- or time-based. Customize how and when devices are provisioned at any stage of the device lifecycle, whether they are instantly activated or go through a lengthy distribution process.

Safeguard your business with enterprise-grade security. Mitigate unauthorized access to your IoT devices and data with multi-layered device-to-cloud security. Utilize Control Center’s whitelisting capabilities and automated security rules to prevent rogue device activity and cybersecurity attacks.

Essential vs. Advantage Accounts

Control Center is offered in a pay-as-you-grow model with two service offer choices, called Control Center Essential and Control Center Advantage. Both accommodate massive to critical IoT applications across various vertical use cases.

  • Control Center Essential is ideal for most massive IoT deployments incorporating devices that perform simple tasks like collecting and sending small data packets at periodic intervals or based on specific events. Use cases include: smart agriculture, smart meters, and asset tracking.
  • Control Center Advantage is best suited for critical IoT applications that incorporate highly mobile devices with higher data usage, and require low latency/high reliability connectivity. Use cases include: autonomous and connected cars, consumer tablets and wearables, transportation, fleet and logistics applications.

Control Center Add-on Packages are additional capabilities that enterprises can subscribe to through Control Center Marketplace as their needs evolve.

The following table provides a quick comparison of the Essential and Advantage account types.

Essential vs. Advantage Account Types
Features Essential (Simple IoT) Advantage (Complex IoT)
Services
  • Data (GPRS, LTE, NB-IoT, 5G NSA, 5G SA)
  • SMS ( Add-On )This is an add-on package.
    This feature is an add-on package. Not all users will have access.
  • Voice ( Add-On )This is an add-on package.
    This feature is an add-on package. Not all users will have access.
  • Data (GPRS, LTE, NB-IoT*, 5G NSA, 5G SA)
  • SMS
  • Voice
Lifecycle Management All SIM states available
except Global SIM states		 Full functionality
Rate plans
  • Four rate plan types (monthly fixed pool, monthly flexible pool, prepaid and monthly individual)
  • Zone-based rating for the default zone plus one more
  • No mid-cycle rate plan changes for devices with an Activated SIM status
  • Multiple rate plan types (monthly, prepaid, supplemental)
  • Zone-based rating for the default zone plus 25 more
  • Immediate rate plan changes for all devices
Automation

Basic functionality ( Add-On )This is an add-on package.
This feature is an add-on package. Not all users will have access.

  • Basic functionality
  • Full functionality ( Add-On )This is an add-on package.
    This feature is an add-on package. Not all users will have access.
APIs REST APIs only
(1 TPS/account)		 REST and SOAP APIs
(5 TPS/account for both types of APIs combined)

*The available services depend on the operator network and the operator agreement with Cisco.

Control Center enforces a clear separation between the two types of enterprise accounts. An enterprise may have both Essential and Advantage accounts, but the features available to their devices depend on the account containing each device. Each account requires separate log-in credentials.

API Access to Control Center

Control Center provides an application programming interface (API) that allows you to access and edit data from an external application. Using the API, you can perform many of the same tasks you can handle through Control Center's web interface, including:

  • Managing the device lifecycle
  • Monitoring data, SMS, and voice usage
  • Sending messages to a device
  • Assigning a rate plan to a device