Does Cisco do Video?
A visit to Amsterdam in September affords the annual pilgrimage to the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC), this being a must attend event for professionals engaged in the creation, production and transmission of video to any consumption device.
The IBC Conference sees the dissemination of the latest industry thinking, available through keynote speeches and discussion panels, backed up by the release of technical papers. Cisco speakers at IBC 2015 included:
- David Ward, senior vice president, Engineering, CTO and chief architect, Cisco, “The Next Wave of Internet Disruption,” Friday, September 11, 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m., RAI, Room G102/103.
- Nick Fielibert, director, business development and sales, EMEAR cable, media and video, Cisco, “From SDI to IT networks: Impacts on Technology, Workflow and Team Building for TV and Media Production,” Monday, September 14, 6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m., RAI, Emerald Theatre.
The IBC Exhibition enables a huge variety of technology suppliers, 1700 at the last count, to showcase their latest products and thinking. Spread over a growing number of halls, fourteen this year, the exhibitors are grouped into those providing Creation, Management and Delivery of content.
I used to get asked “Do Cisco do Video? I didn’t know that”, well at stand 1.A71 in Hall 1, this trade show has seen Cisco develop new ideas to transform the broadcasting environment. Not content merely to move the whole channel production, playout and delivery to IP Cisco is enabling broadcasters worldwide to rapidly bring to market advanced services such as time-shifted TV, Cloud DVR, targeted advertising, personalized video and secure content distribution throughout the home.
The highlight for me was the launching of Cisco’s Infinite Suite of Cloud Video Solutions, the idea being “One Cloud, Any access network, Any screen, Anywhere”. The suite consists of the following:
- Infinite Home Two way video experience on any screen
- Infinite Broadcast One-way / hybrid video experience for managed devices
- Infinite Video Over the top (OTT) video experience for un-managed devices
- Infinite DVR Cloud based digital video recorder services
To see how well the market is responding to Cisco’s Infinite Suite, take the example of Jim Fitzgerald, senior vice president, Engineering and CTO, Eastlink.
“We plan to trial Infinite Video next quarter to deliver next-gen personalized video to multiple screens. We need a solution that combines a great user experience and comprehensive video services with fast time-to-market and continuous improvement that only the cloud can deliver. Cisco’s Infinite Video promises these characteristics plus the operational readiness, scale and flexibility we expect from Cisco, and we are looking forward to seeing the product in action.”
For further details, see press release:
http://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1717057
Cisco’s highly successful Digital Content Manager is being virtualised; The vDCM is a new suite of software functions for the Cisco® Virtualized Video Processing (V2P) platform, which enables video operators and media companies for the first time to virtualize video processing operations for main screen, live TV. For details see press release:
http://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1717044
Cisco developed its Software-Centric Media Architecture based on its knowledge of all things IP. Key elements include:
- Professional Media Networking Platform (PMN): Transforms today’s proprietary routing infrastructure to an open, IP-based network
- Media Cloud: Unified compute, network, and storage resources with a programmable cloud infrastructure
- Virtualized Video Processing (V2P): An open and extensible platform that simplifies and accelerates the deployment of virtualized video processing workflows
- Cloud Object Store (COS): A video-optimized storage service that supports multiple media applications based on Cisco’s scalable UCS.
- Security: Cisco’s threat-centric security solution that provides end-to-end protection for media and broadcaster business operations spanning the data centre to multiscreen content distribution
Yvette Kanouff, senior vice president and general manager, Service Provider Video Software and Solutions, Cisco puts across the company’s position re Video in her blog entry Trust Me: Cisco Hearts Video: http://blogs.cisco.com/news/trust-me-cisco-hearts-video
To finish, billions of people worldwide watch TV programming from companies that use Cisco, so we no longer hear “I didn’t know Cisco did Video”.
