James Governor's Monkchips

Cisco’s Video Revolution: We The Media. $CSCO $ADBE

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The major theme for Cisco at this year’s C-Scape conference for analysts was video, which makes a great deal of sense. Too much of the internet has been tell, and now it can be show.

Video is one of RedMonk’s fastest growing revenue streams, for example. Its important to understand that amongst all last year’s excitement about We, The Media, and Man of the Year being you, a major fact was forgotten. The Youtube revolution isn’t just for kids sitting down, dancing on video. Its not just a “consumer” phenomenon. Its also all about B2B.

Every conference I go to now is like a competition to see who can video who the most. RedMonk is watching you watching us watching you. IBM does Gonzo video. So does everyone.

Companies not just individuals.

This video revolution of course creates opportunity – and Cisco is jumping in with a video server, the Media Experience Engine 3000, which re-purposes video for different form factors from phones to High Def, which I believe retails at $56k.

Cisco competing with Apple? Who would have thunk it? To really make its ambitions count I believe Cisco will make a play for Adobe, filling out a video internet value chain from low to high production to the web.

All in all Cisco clearly sees a strategic opportunity in hypermedia. So much so, that it now talks about the medianet rather than the internet. Cisco has a lot of work to do, but its right that their is a lot of opportunity in video.

disclosure: I wrote this post in ten minutes, so if you see any mistakes please let me know. Cisco is not currently a client, but it paid my T&E to C-Scape in San Jose. See you in London…

8 comments

  1. Sure that CSCO is not more about jumping on the telepresence religious bandwagon that seems to be reaching many companies? BTW – at LeWeb, you couldn’t move without having a video camera shoved in your face. I blame @193media.

  2. Hey Dennis. Clearly Cisco is ALL OVER telepresence. But it has major ambitions for Media – the more video is created and digitised the more network pipes you need. Video feeds demand for Cisco’s core networking franchise products. Just look at the impact of the BBC iPlayer and the ITV version on UK bandwidth. For Cisco video equipment and services could practically be a loss leader and it would still feed the bottom line 😉 But clearly its going to be a multibillion dollar business in its own right. I think the recession can only push telepresence and video forward.

  3. […] Redmonk’s James Governor opined that Cisco might make a play for Adobe Systems, bells went off in my head. It just made […]

  4. […] Expectations are set high with Cisco Telepresence. You have to use one of their offices, so its a managed environment.  Quality of service is a given. As chair of SAP’s Sustainability Stakeholder Panel I was recently invited to Cisco’s offices in London to attend a meeting with the Panel, and SAP Co-CEO Jim Hagemann-Snabe. You can imagine my disappointment when the system just didn’t work. Even worse – and how is this for unfortunate? – one of the panel members flew from their location to SAP’s Philadelphia office for the TelePresence meeting. Ah yes – sustainability and telepresence… Suffice to say the outcome was pretty embarrassing. Maybe Tim can make something funny out of it. TelePresence is utterly amazing- it really is like being in the room with the other folks on the call- when it works properly. And yes this was nothing but a configuraton issue/ I am on the record as being bullish about Cisco’s Video Revolution. […]

  5. […] Expectations are set high with Cisco Telepresence. You have to use one of their offices, so its a managed environment.  Quality of service is a given. As chair of SAP’s Sustainability Stakeholder Panel I was recently invited to Cisco’s offices in London to attend a meeting with the Panel, and SAP Co-CEO Jim Hagemann-Snabe. You can imagine my disappointment when the system just didn’t work. Even worse – and how is this for unfortunate? – one of the panel members flew from their location to SAP’s Philadelphia office for the TelePresence meeting. Ah yes – sustainability and telepresence… Suffice to say the outcome was pretty embarrassing. Maybe Tim can make something funny out of it. TelePresence is utterly amazing- it really is like being in the room with the other folks on the call- when it works properly. And yes this was nothing but a configuraton issue. I am on the record as being bullish about Cisco’s Video Revolution. […]

  6. […] Cisco launched its Telepresence line in 2006. Despite being Priced at $300,000 during the midst of a recession, Telepresence was Cisco's fasting growing product in 2008 according to Fast Company. Cisco was also running its own internal YouTube-like video sharing site for employees. Video was so central to the Cisco of 2008 that there was even speculation that Cisco would buy Adobe. […]

  7. […] Cisco launched its Telepresence line in 2006. Despite being priced at $300,000 during the midst of a recession, Telepresence was Cisco's fasting growing product in 2008 according to Fast Company. Cisco was also running its own internal YouTube-like video sharing site for employees. Video was so central to the Cisco of 2008, there was even speculation that Cisco would buy Adobe. […]

  8. […] Cisco launched its Telepresence line in 2006. Despite being priced at $300,000 during the midst of a recession, Telepresence was Cisco’s fasting growing product in 2008 according to Fast Company. Cisco was also running its own internal YouTube-like video sharing site for employees. Video was so central to the Cisco of 2008, there was even speculation that Cisco would buy Adobe. […]

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