Folks,

We are in the midst of exciting times. As the small cell industry gathers here in London for the annual Small Cells World Summit, I'm delighted to welcome the world-class team from Ubiquisys into Cisco.  At the same time, we're announcing the formation of a new Small Cell Wireless Backhaul Ecosystem with the top vendors in the industry.

Let me start with an introduction, since this is my first SP 360 blog.  I'm the VP/GM of the new Cisco Small Cell Technology Group.  Cisco has been investing in both internal engineering development and external acquisitions in small cell technology for several years now, and this moment marks a milestone in our long-term strategic plan.

We have the industry leading carrier-grade SP Wi-Fi solution, and one of the largest residential femto deployments with over 1 million devices deployed by AT&T.  We've learned a great deal over the years about how to rapidly deploy licensed and unlicensed small cells with zero touch provisioning, keeping costs low and customer satisfaction high.

We've been partnering with Ubiquisys for quite some time because we see them as industry leaders and in fact one of the founders of the small cell industry.  Now that we have their expertise in-house, we're able to rapidly roll out an expanding portfolio of licensed small cells to meet the widening array of deployment needs.  This also means that we are adding decentralized SON capability to our centralized SON proficiency gained through the recent Intucell acquisition.

In February we announced the ASR 901S, a small cell backhaul router that brings hardened network intelligence into some of the more challenging environments where small cells are being deployed.  Today we are announcing an ecosystem of wireless backhaul partners that have been tested with our end-to-end solution and can deliver the right solution for wireless backhaul to meet any carrier need -line-of-sight (LOS), non line-of-sight, point to point or point to multipoint -these vendors offer industry leading solutions.  We are proud to announce the Small Cell Wireless Backhaul Ecosystem with BLiNQ, DragonWave, Fastback Networks, NEC, RADWIN, and Siklu.

I can't stress enough the importance of ecosystems and partnerships to our business. In fact, with the recent Ubiquisys acquisition close, I'd like to reiterate our commitment to our small cell OEM partners. This is underscored by our partners themselves:

"In addition to our existing business with Ubiquisys, NEC and Cisco have built on a strong partnership in the telecommunications field for more than two decades," said Nozumu Watanabe, general manager, Mobile Radio Access Network Division, NEC Corporation. "Following Cisco's acquisition of Ubiquisys, NEC aims to continue leveraging these relationships in order to pursue Small Cell synergies and business opportunities that assure the supply of high-quality Small Cell Solutions to our customers around the world."

It's an exciting time to be leading our small cell business at Cisco.  Stay tuned to this space -I'd like to stay in touch as we continue to execute on our strategic plan.