Cloud is Transforming TV: Cisco Is Transforming Cloud TV Delivery

By Adam Davies, product marketing manager for Infinite Video, Service Provider Video Software and Solutions, Cisco

By now it’s very clear that TV and entertainment viewing habits are changing. More people are accessing more content on more devices than ever before. Revenue from subscription OTT services is expected to almost double — to $50 billion by 2020 (!) — a shift that represents a huge opportunity for service providers.

To meet this opportunity, service providers – and their partners, like us – need to think differently about how services are delivered. We need to give customers what they want – fast and easy access to the shows they love, when they want them on all the screens they want to use. Plus we need to move fast. Yearly (or even quarterly) releases just don’t cut it in today’s technology landscape, so cluttered with platforms and new devices hitting the market at a frequency we’ve never seen before. At the same time, applications-based services release new features and functionality on a weekly basis (or daily, or hourly, in some cases.)

And then there’s the challenge of live and linear content. Providing linear streams needs significant up-front investment, with lead and delivery times for equipment and technology slowing down the process and making it difficult to launch new services quickly.

To help Service Providers meet these challenges Cisco today unveiled ‘Infinite Video’ a member of our new Infinite suite of cloud-powered video solutions. Our new Infinite Video solution will help service providers deliver outstanding Video experiences to multiple screens, utilizing one cloud, on regular broadband access connections, within the home and on the go. We are bringing ‘Video dial-tone’ to the market, ensuring that we are maintaining quality whilst providing users the full-featured linear, on-demand and time shifted video experiences they seek.

We’re providing a User Experience that is ready to go live as soon as the Service is up and running. We’ve built it to work on multiple platforms and devices, including tablets, smartphones, HDMI sticks and set top boxes, running iOS and Android, so it’s pre-integrated for the devices the market wants. And we’ve made sure that there are branding options available, to let the Service Provider put their stamp on the interface.

And by working in the cloud, and using new methods and processes for delivery – DevOps for video – we can give our customers the accelerated launch times they need, and then maintain that speed as new services are rolled out and new devices hit the market. This is precisely where Infinite Video gives our customer the edge over their competition.

But we know that that it can take time to build a business, so our consumption based, pay as you grow pricing model means that our customers will only pay for what they use, when they use it, greatly reducing up front spend. And because this a hosted and managed service operational expenditure is reduced as well, helping de-risk the building new services, and letting our customers focus on running their businesses — not their technology.

At Cisco, we are seeing how the cloud is transforming TV. Let us show you, live! We’re at IBC at stand 1.A71 in Hall 1 at the RAI.

Tweet us with your pictures, questions or comments at@CiscoSPVideo.