Cisco “Show-verview” for NAB 2019 in Las Vegas

It’s NAB time, and we’re excited to bring you a series of blogs detailing our intentions and presence at this year’s show. As we put the finishing touches on our Vegas plan, it seemed useful to try to capture it all in one place – a “show-verview,” if you will.

Let’s start with where we’ll be: Booth SU8502CM, which is code for South Hall, Upper Level, near the Connected Media/IP area. We’re really happy with how the booth plans turned out, which you can read all about in this piece, written by my colleague Jacob Jeevanayagam. In recap, we’ll be showing a range of solutions designed to help our customers transform content production including our Media Data Center, IP Fabric for Media, Media Processing tools, Hybrid Cloud Data Center, and AppDynamics suite.

As for intentions, perhaps the most important among them is our redoubled commitment to the media and entertainment industry, which I wrote about recently. Not only is it the first time I’ve ever gotten to use the word “elephant,” as in “elephant in the room,” in a blog title, which is a small but enjoyable personal accomplishment. It’s also our take on the difference between “TV” and “video,” and how that distinction reinforced some of our recent strategic moves.

As important at this year’s NAB is our “strength in partners” approach, evidenced by the volume of ecosystem allies we’ve integrated with, across the “co-opetition” spectrum: From standards bodies to the biggest names in the technology sector serving media and entertainment. Again I direct your attention to my colleague Bryan Bedford, who did a nice job of characterizing those activities here.

As for our presence, beyond the booth, we’re hosting three sessions at this year’s “CM-IP Theater,” where the “CM” stands for “Connected Media” and the IP stands for “Internet Protocol.” The first one happens on Monday April 8 at 11, when Bryan will give a presentation titled “Adopting IP/IT in the Media Supply Chain.”

The second one occurs on Tuesday, April 9, at 11, and features speakers from our shop – Nish Parkar and Rahul Parameswaran, namely – as well as WWT’s Manager of Systems Engineering and Media, Gene Arantowicz and Lawo’s SVP of Networked Audio/Video, Erling Hedkvist. That session is titled “Straight Talk About the IP Transition in Media: Current State, Future State, Handy Pro Tips.”

The third, titled “So It’s Time to Go IP: A Primer on Media Data Centers and How They Make Your Life Better, happens on Wednesday, April 10, at 11. That one includes our Kyle Tedeschi and Dave Desroches, plus Avid’s Director of Broadcast and Media Solutions Marketing, Ray Thompson, and Scality’s Chief Product Officer, Paul Speciale.

That’s it for this year’s NAB show overview. Looking forward to seeing you there!