Virtualizing Video

Here today at CES 2014, the show is kicking off in full swing. With attendance of over 150,000 people expected, the buzz is building off of last year around the latest 4K/UltraHD televisions, smart devices, and wearables with the overall theme of the show being the Internet of Everything.  But while the name of the show focuses on consumer electronics, what isn’t as widely recognized is that CES is also the largest service provider tradeshow in the Americas with operators coming from around the globe to learn about new services they can offer those devices to increase their revenue, new ways to offer those services to save on operating costs, and news ways to roll those services out quickly to catch market opportunities.

Yesterday, Cisco announced ways for service providers to address each of those fundamental business care-abouts by announcing it is virtualizing Videoscape – its leading immersive video solution – by putting it into the cloud. This announcement has three standout offers:

• New Videoscape Cloud Software capabilities which can run on public and private clouds, such as OpenStack.  This enables SPs to deploy new video applications on demand, shaving months off time to service at an improved total cost of ownership.
• New Videoscape Cloud Services functionality available “as a service” using a unique consumption-based model.  Cisco is the only video solution provider to offer SaaS options.  Now, SPs of all sizes, especially those who may not have as extensive of an infrastructure foundation, can quickly enhance their existing offerings or build new ones, without the need to code, create, and integrate new capabilities themselves.  This saves tremendous time and gets services to market faster with new revenue generating opportunities and personalized experiences.
• New Cisco Cloud Fusion for Videoscape which ties all of the implementation options together.  This allows SPs to seamlessly integrate various modes of deploying Videoscape – performance optimized hardware and software, Videoscape Cloud Software and Videoscape Cloud Services – and new cloud-oriented clients to best support their business needs, maximizing return-on-investment.  Effectively, this fusion approach gives the opportunity to leverage the best of each technology as needed to meet their specific requirements.  For example, if a provider already has Videoscape optimized hardware and software, they could still leverage that for a greater ROI but complement with cloud or as-a-service aspects to more quickly roll out new services faster without having to do a forklift upgrade.

These announcements map to the Virtualization vision that Pankaj Patel, our EVP of Engineering, highlighted last month as it is an example of even more ways Cisco is virtualizing its capabilities into software, blends both hardware and software to get the best outcome, and is looking at the issue from a broader architectural and solution perspective instead of a more narrow functional specific view.   And of note, it is just one of a number of such announcements we have coming early this year, with the next only weeks away.

More on that later, as for now, it is back to hosting the more than 500 service provider customer meetings we have planned for this week in humidity-deprived Las Vegas.  We’ll be talking about all these video announcements and much more and working with customers to further address their business challenges.  And on later today, our CEO will be deliver a keynote speech on how the Internet of Everything provides great opportunities for all in this ecosystem with the service providers having a unique ability to sit in the center of it all.

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