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Cloud

Video in the Clouds

Steven Batey
January 5, 2016

Cisco can manage and run network services and applications using cloud-enabled Data Centres, having formed its Cloud Solutions engineering organisation in order to deliver cloud solutions and platforms across the company. A leader in cloud technologies, the company offers a broad portfolio of UCS infrastructure, cloud automation solutions and partnerships.

Cisco’s Open Network Architecture for Service Providers describes three layers of interaction:

The architecture is programmable – each layer connects and drives its neighbours using software which, in turn, uses open APIs to deliver this integration. Each layer can, therefore, integrate Cisco and 3rd party components.

The infrastructure layer, the Evolved Programmable Network (EPN), is the foundational layer consisting of compute, storage and network. It integrates the physical and virtual, NFV network and data centre infrastructure.

The orchestration layer, the Evolved Services Platform (ESP), translates requirements from the application layer into workflows delivered by the EPN layer. This ESP layer orchestrates hardware and virtual functions together to create workflows, based on open standards.

Applications use standard APIs to request resources and workflows from the ESP layer.

Cisco is leveraging a $2billion investment in overall cloud infrastructure, whilst providing a unified comprehensive security which covers not only end-to-end but top-to-bottom infrastructure.

At Mobile World Congress, EANTC published the results of an independent evaluation of Cisco’s Service Provider Cloud and Virtualization solution. Commissioned by Light Reading, the report verified:

“Cisco’s NFV solution provides multi-vendor support, complete service life-cycle automation as well as a palette of cloud-based, deployment-ready applications.”

http://www.lightreading.com/nfv/nfv-tests-and-trials/validating-ciscos-service-provider-virtualization-and-cloud-portfolio/d/d-id/714092?

The first pillar of Cisco’s cloud strategy is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) enablement, having Cisco and their Intercloud partners run SaaS offerings, with an initial focus on collaboration as well as video. Whilst Cisco has many cloud products, my focus is on what this all means for Video.

Cisco is utilising its multi-billion dollar investment in cloud infrastructure to deliver Infinite Solutions that enable Service Providers to provide compelling video experiences from one cloud, across any access network, to any screen, anywhere, any time. The Infinite Suite of Cloud Video Solutions 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

Cisco Infinite Solutions deliver outstanding TV experiences to multiple screens, from a single cloud, on any access network, anywhere. With the latest acquisition, we have over 70 SaaS customers. Cisco Virtualized Video Processing unleashes industry innovation with an open, programmable, scalable and extensible platform for automating and orchestrating media processing, storage and delivery applications. Cisco security solutions protect the end-to-end video delivery value chain from creation to consumption across data centres, networks and devices.

The data centres offer broadcasters not just capex cost savings, but the ability to scale up or down to launch new services, respond to AdHoc demand with pop-up channels (e.g., around major sporting events). The goal is to provision a service in hours, not months, as is currently the case.

These are very demanding video applications, leveraging the UCS infrastructure we have convergence of compute and storage on the same hardware to deliver clusters of storage that can scale to billions of objects and deliver the performance required for differing services – low latency and high throughput – for reading and writing at highly concurrent levels for either unique copy cloud DVR or transforming live content into a Time Shift TV service.

Yvette Kanouff, Senior Vice President Cloud Solutions, is driving the cloud engineering teams progress:

“We are still committed to the key principles of enabling hybrid cloud for our customers from the data centre to the edge in a way that gives them choice, compliance and control. These capabilities are enabled by many solutions including Cisco Intercloud Fabric, Cisco ONE Enterprise Cloud Suite, Virtual Managed Services (vMS), our SaaS portfolio and our cloud platforms such as Cisco Metapod and Cisco Intercloud Services (CIS). We will continue to enhance and integrate these solutions going forward.”