Peter Christy

Cisco and Consumers

Cisco acquired Pure Digital, a very successful entrant into the video camera market having intelligently focused on all digital (flash) systems that were very easy to use for capture and sharing. But just as when Cisco entered the home media server business earlier this year, it makes to wonder why Cisco thinks it can succeed as a consumer brand when so many others fail, and consumer products are hardly a core strength. Were this any company other than Cisco we could probably bank some analyst points with a snotty and cynical projection of failure or limited success, but we've learned that's dangerous to do with Cisco. Cisco is pretty remarkable at doing things that are clear and important to them, and end-to-end video including consumers is unquestionably a clear John Chambers priority, no doubt. When we talk to Cisco about these issues, we always encounter smart people who both understand the problems and are working hard on the solutions even if this means fighting against Cisco history and culture. We'll remain skeptical but we're not going to bet on failure.

Cisco Video Architecture

At the C-Scape Analyst Meeting, video was the hot item for the obvious reason that increased video use places great demands on network infrastructure and drives network investment. As part of this, Cisco talked about a broad network "architecture" called medianet as the underpinnings. I had a chance to follow up with a delightful hour with Guido Jouret, the CTO of the Emerging Technology Group. You have to be wary about claims of network "architecture" because in the past many have turned out to be more "marketecture," but in the case of video there definitely is meat. When today's Internet first appeared as the ARPAnet the "backbone" links were 56Kbits/sec and the target application was command line use of remote computer systems. It was inconceivable then that any form of audio other than telephony would be served, much less something like HD video (survivable telephony was the initial driver for packet network development). Over the years, technology has obviously made huge advances and we find great value in network convergence —  putting more and more network traffic onto a fabric made with common technology (TCP/IP). To make video work, it isn't enough to just pile on bandwidth, or more accurately, we're many years or even decades from the point where excess provisioning might be a solution. Unlike most network applications, there is no graceful fallback for video when network performance diminishes. Quickly the video experience becomes totally unsatisfying. Cisco has a broad set of technologies meant to address video issues, some already in place in their IP/TV offering and broader product lines. The critical new additions are (a) video devices and subsystems that self-identify their capability and needs; (b) real-time management of network performance and the ability to intelligently respond when problems happen (today if there are four concurrent TelePresence sessions sharing a common link and the available bandwidth goes down under the collective requirement they all hang up, even though any three could continue without impact, or all four could continue if they could agree on acceptable fallback conditions); and (c) the ability to place critical video processing (e.g., video transcoding) at the most intelligent place in the network (e.g., it doesn't make a lot of sense to carry a high-bandwidth signal all the way across the network and then down convert it at the receiving end if it could be down converted much earlier and all that bandwidth saved). Video over TCP/IP is at best very difficult and very expensive compared to most uses of these networks, so exactly what will go over the Internet and what will stay on cable or satellite is still very much an open question in my mind. Cisco is putting in place the technologies needed to make it work as well as possible and enable the applications that do make sense. Along the way they are finally developing a real idea of what the "network as a platform" really means (most of the earlier versions were unquestionably primarily marketecture). It seems clear that 2009 will start to paint a much clearer and exciting picture of how video can exploit TCP/IP networks.

Video and the Network (redoux)

The overarching theme at C-Scape was Video as it has been repeatedly in the past. Video of course drives huge increases in network traffic and demands for high quality network services, so for a network equipment vendor it must be an important topic. What is different this year is: (1) Cisco products are starting to drive video loads directly (TelePresence) and (2) Cisco has introduced a family of video network products. Ultimately video end-point devices will include meta-data by which they can identify their needs to the network (bandwidth, quality of service - in the interim Cisco will let switch ports act as a surrogate for the connected device). The first notable product is a transcoder that transforms common video formats - Cisco's goals is that any media can be experienced from any endpoint (a future version will do real-time transcoding). Video is integrated with WebEx already. There is no doubt that video will play an important role in the network (anyone who has experienced Cisco TelePresence or HP Halo Room will agree). The more interesting question is "how much?" Cisco hasn't tried to answer that yet. While there are some jobs (like John Chambers') that are defined by non-stop meetings, I believe that for most people trying to get a job done the goal is fewer, more-effective meetings, not more meetings. That suggests a bound to how much video a normal organization will drive.