Cisco Transforms How Video Can Be Deployed, Consumed and Scaled for the Enterprise With Advancements to Medianet Architecture

Adds Intelligence to the Network to Help Enable 'Any-to-Any' Interoperability, Makes Video More Searchable, and Simplifies Video Deployments Through Plug-and-Play Endpoints

| Source: Cisco Cisco

SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwire - October 22, 2010) -  Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today unveiled the next phase of the medianet, an end-to-end architecture for video and rich media designed to help network operators and IT managers more effectively manage and deploy multiple video systems.

Cisco announced a new category of "medianet-enabled" products focusing on media transformation. As more organizations use video for effective collaboration, media transformation is designed to make it radically easier for customers to deploy, use and search video across the enterprise.

One of the flagship products designed for media transformation, and a key component of Cisco's architecture, is the Cisco MXE 5600 (Media Experience Engine). With this offering, customers have access to a wide variety of media-processing services, including dynamic format conversions, so that video can be consumed on any device at anytime, regardless of format. The Cisco MXE 5600 offers robust interconnect for live media between Cisco and third party video conferencing systems, desktop endpoints and PC-based video applications. Additionally, the recently enhanced Cisco MXE 3500 makes video more searchable and social. The product can now analyze video content and create tags based on video and audio content, such as speaker or topic. As a result, customers can benefit from automatic social tagging and enjoy opportunities to search and navigate video based on content.

Cisco also introduced a suite of plug-and-play medianet-enabled endpoints. These "smart" endpoints -- ranging from a medianet-enabled digital media player to a video surveillance system -- include embedded intelligence that enables the network to automatically recognize and configure the endpoints when they are deployed. This not only provides customers with new ways to scale video faster but can also help customers reduce the cost of deploying video.

With new media services, new endpoints and recently announced infrastructure advancements, medianet solutions are able to help customers use video more pervasively while also helping to solve challenges around video delivery, interoperability, and quality.

Key Highlights

New Video Innovations

  • With Cisco's latest Media Experience Engine, network operators and IT managers now have the ability to move media, regardless of format, on any device, endpoint or application. If the media is not in the right format for the endpoint, it can be automatically adapted to deliver an outstanding customer experience. This helps customers tap into the true value of video in a very scalable way.
  • The Cisco MXE 5600 provides robust interoperability capabilities with broad support for Cisco and third-party video conferencing systems, desktop endpoints and PC-based video applications.
  • The Cisco MXE 3500 integrates with Cisco Show and Share™, a webcasting and video sharing application that helps organizations create highly secure video communities, to provide video discovery and harvesting across the enterprise. Cisco Pulse® media services will be integrated into the MXE 3500 in the first half of calendar year 2011, giving customers new ways to easily search and tag video content. Instead of scrolling through massive amounts of content to find relevant video, customers can use solutions such as tagging or speaker recognition to quickly find the desired information.

Making Video Plug and Play

  • In order to improve optimization and make video easier to deploy and manage, Cisco introduced new medianet-enabled endpoints. These endpoints provide auto-configuration capabilities to simplify deployments and help reduce ongoing operational costs of rich-media applications and endpoints.
  • The Cisco Digital Media Player 4310, which delivers rich-media content to digital signs, offers customers more flexibility in the type of content they can create, including richer animations and graphics, and full screen flash support. It also enables delivery of high-definition video and Adobe Flash technology to digital displays.
  • The new digital media player offerings complement other medianet-enabled endpoints, including the industry's first medianet-enabled video surveillance camera. Recently announced, the Cisco Video Surveillance 4000 Series IP Camera can be automatically configured on the network to simplify and speed deployments across urban and enterprise environments.
  • Built into these endpoints is a new software component, the Cisco Media Services Interface, which provides the network with visibility into the applications and, conversely, applications visibility into the network. This tight integration can scale, optimize and enhance the deployment and performance of video, greatly improving user experience.

Quotes:

Marthin De Beer, senior vice president, Emerging Technologies business group, Cisco:

"There is a significant market transition under way as organizations prepare for pervasive video use. This transition is even more profound than the transition to e-business in the 1990s. Not only does video mean huge productivity savings and a richer experience, but it also opens the door to change the way we work, live and learn. With the advent of pervasive video, we're solving the same issues today that we solved during Cisco's early days. Rather than determining how to share information between disparate computer systems, we've just figured out how to share rich media between dissimilar endpoints and media formats."

James Webb, chief information officer, West Texas A&M:

"Video is changing the way we engage with students, faculty and staff across the West Texas A&M campus. Using a broad range of Cisco's video solutions, integrated into a common architecture, we're able to quickly and easily distribute community updates via digital signs across campus, capture and share classroom discussions and lectures for students and professors to review on their own time, and improve our safety and security with an integrated physical security system. By working closely with Cisco, West Texas A&M is leading the charge in changing the way educational institutions use video and rich media pervasively throughout the campus environment."

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Technorati Tags: Cisco, video, telepresence, emerging tech, medianet, video sharing, IP video, Internet video, digital signage, physical security, surveillance, analytics, media transformation, pervasive video, videoconferencing, prosumer video, desktop video, mxe, mxa, video adaptation

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Cisco, the Cisco logo, Cisco Systems, Cisco Pulse, Cisco Show and Share, and Cisco TelePresence are registered trademarks or trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Adobe and Flash are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. This document is Cisco Public Information.

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