We are very pleased to announce a new medianet release including new products that support the medianet features:
Cisco Prime™ Assurance Manager which provides an end-to-end proactive, network based monitoring, troubleshooting & analysis of application traffic. It supports a variety of data sources including performance monitor.
The month of January always seems to be a very busy time at gyms; everyone starts the New Year off with good intentions. Now that February is here I can definitely see the trail off of in attendance at the local gym. Have you resolved to deploy video this year, or maybe your users have resolved for you J ? You’ll need to ensure your network is fit for the job. It won’t be difficult at all. There are features to make it easy to stay on track.
The first of those features is AutoQos.
The concept of Auto Qos is that the hard work of defining a QOS strategy and implementing it on the network is already done for you. Two main things compromise that strategy, what are the DSCP settings that should be used and how to interpret those setting into a configuration that implements classification, policing and queuing mechanisms within the network.
I hope all of you social media gurus are enjoying the great speakers Cisco lined up for Social Media Week! And while no surprise to us video enthusiasts, it was great to see industry thought leaders repeatedly reference video as the killer app when it comes to engaging your audience in social media and beyond.
Jeanette Gibson, Cisco Global Social Media Marketing Director, illustrated some great examples of how Cisco uses video to scale subject matter experts internally and for customer support, as well as how Cisco has been able to measure purchase and impact on revenue with video.
A great example is this video made about the ASR 9000 router that encourages viewers to schedule a demo. The video has garnered 10,000 views, which has led to 800 demos, 200 qualified leads, resulting in $18M of influence sales. Talk about an ROI for video!
Of course, enterprise video content comes in many forms and doesn’t have to be a highly produced video like this example. Grassroots video from passionate employees can also be a great tool to promote a brand and share information internally or externally about a company or product.
Making it easy for employees to capture, transform and share video so that “anyone can be a video publisher,” as Jeanette said, is key to an enterprise video strategy that embraces video as a part of its culture.
If I had to summarize Cisco Live London in one word, I choose “educational”. In the four days I was at Cisco Live London, I had the opportunity to meet our local medianet experts, Patrick Charretour and Peter Matthews, learn about our broad core network portfolio, and listen to the challenges our customers face as they use video solutions in their organization. Whether customers are deploying video surveillance, signage, or telepresence, each seemed to want help on where to start with their deployment and wondering if medianet would be the solution.
Conversations at the medianet station were engaging and all seem to start with the same question, “What is medianet?”. Medianet is Cisco’s end-to-end video architecture, optimize for the pervasive deployment of video. So at Cisco Live, we demonstrated how Cisco’s medianet architecture makes it easier for you to plan, deploy and manage video in your organization. Using Cisco TelePresence EX 90 systems, we demonstrated the performance monitoring and mediatrace capabilities in a Cisco medianet, allowing application and network managers to easily identify and troubleshoot issues that may occur during a telepresence call. We also showed a new capability, but since we haven’t officially launched it, I can’t say much. You’ll just have to go to Interop Las Vegas or Cisco Live San Diego to find out.
Peter showing a mediatrace of the TelePresence session
Last week, Cisco hosted another fantastic Cisco Live Europe in London. Over 6000 people were in attendance during the event this time around and this was very visible in the crowds in the world of solutions as well as the class rooms.
Also very visible, was the growing impact of video not only in the lives of the people attending but also the networks that they are building and caring for. I talked to a very passionate video conferencing administrator that proudly described how video conferencing technology has been saving lives on offshore oil platforms by connecting nurses with medical specialists. The network quality and transmission is critical in these cases and the case for video (for a variety of applications) is driving a re-evaluation of how the network could be designed and optimized. The next day I talked with a network operator that was struggling to deliver on a mandate from management to provide video conferencing and town hall type meetings to an already stretched thin network.
The internet generation has their own way of working; they are not confined to one space and want flexibility to use different tools; they are more mobile, social, visual, and virtual. They use technology to expand their community of influence across coworkers, suppliers, and customers, breaking down barriers to solve problems across and within these communities.
I have recorded a VoD were I share my thoughts on how Cisco is uniquely positioned to empower the internet generation to transform businesses by expanding the reach of video and making it pervasive. Take a listen and share your thoughts with me.
Nothing irritates me more than technology that goes unused. Shiny things, cool bells and whistles, and technology features don’t excite me unless I see people using the technology to transform their business and gaining true return on their investment.
I often ask customers, “What is more important to you, get the cheapest deal or realizing the benefits the technology can offer?” Do you choose something because it is free or something that delivers a solution to your needs? Often I’ve seen people choose cost over benefit, to deeply regret it later; spending valuable time not realizing the productivity benefits.
We’ve been singing the praises on this blog about the Federal government’s efforts to encourage telecommuting for its employees. While great strides continue to be made, new research reveals some hurdles that still remain, before widespread adoption will ensue.
First, the good news. Since the enactment of the Telework Enhancement Act in late 2010, the Federal government has clearly made telework a priority for agencies through the creation of an official guide and an overall cultural shift. Read More »
If you are attending Cisco Live London this week, don’t miss the opportunity to meet the medianet team as well as see the medianet capabilities first hand.
In the World of Solutions, we prepared demos to show you how you can deploy and manage video, voice and data with confidence. The demos showcase features discussed in previous blogs like performance monitor, mediatrace and IPSLA video operations as well as a preview of the new features.
Our Cisco TelePresence multipoint solutions are recognized by customers as robust, reliable, and highly scalable. They trust that our solutions deliver the highest quality of features with an impressive lifecycle. Cisco is excited to announce that we are expanding our multipoint offering & launching new advanced Telepresence MCU capabilities.
The new MCU 4.3 software release further extends the functionality of our field-proven and highly configurable Cisco TelePresence MCU.
The trend to increase workforce mobility has accelerated, more customers are proactively empowering employees to work wherever and whenever they have access, to increase productivity and streamline their business. This growing number of employees being set up with video-enabled tablet devices and video endpoints however has added to the burden of IT management; especially massive user, device and phone book provisioning from hundreds of devices to tens of thousands of devices—and across geographic regions and firewalls.
Specifically for telepresence, IT resources have been focused on helping an increasing number of mobile and remote users configure and personalize their devices, endpoints settings, and preferences. Fueled by this demand, Cisco is excited to introduce Cisco TelePresence Provisioning 2.0.
Cisco Live London runs January 30-February 3 at the ICC London ExCel.
Be sure to stop by the World of Solutions Expo to see our demos showcased in the Collaboration, Bring Your Own Device and Physical Security areas.
The Collaboration area will feature a demo that shows the latest in integration across our video content solution with new ways to capture, transform and share video. Next, come see the Physical Security team at booth C7/C8 to see the newest Cisco and partner innovations in video surveillance and analytics. Cisco Physical Security will also have a booth in the Cisco Live Virtual environment. Finally, learn about the architecture that supports it all at the Medianet demo in the Bring Your Own Device area.
If you’re tired from walking the show floor, take a break and check out Cisco Enterprise Video customer Guldborgsund municipality of Denmark talk about how they use video for efficient and personalized citizen services at 2:15 pm on January 31st.
The accolades keep rolling in for West Texas A&M University, which was recently named in the U.S. News and World Report Top 20 for both Technology and Student Services.
Led by CIO James Webb, WTAMU has set the standard for distance learning by using a combination of Cisco Enterprise Video technologies to help students and faculty capture, transform and share video across the campus and beyond.
Webb has himself also garnered recent honors, and was named to ComputerWorld’s 2012 Premier 100 IT Leaders list. The program will honor the top 100 IT and business leaders that have shown exceptional leadership and innovation in IT strategy and planning at a conference to be held in Phoenix, AZ in March 2012.
The National Retail Federation’s BIG show had another record-breaking year receiving over 25,500 attendees from 78 countries. With over 100 educational sessions and a jam-packed EXPO floor, energy was high.
The innovative demos in the Cisco booth attracted a great deal of traffic offering retailers new ways to generate revenue, create a consistent user experience across all channels, and maximize operational efficiency.
Cisco Interactive Services was very popular. This demo, developed by Cisco and partner Array Interactive, delivered interactive applications allowing attendees to build a wardrobe of outfits, receive fashion advice, and through video collaboration capabilities, connect with a live fashion expert on-demand.
The StyleMe virtual fashion mirror also received great interest as retailers “tried-on” their outfits of choice using gesture-based navigation to make their selection from the inventory of clothing. Attendees could even capture images of themselves in their new outfits to share over social media and email. Read More »
In the last medianet blog, Ulrica de Fort-Menares described the medianet architecture as two concepts: horizontal and vertical integration. In this blog we will discuss some examples of these concepts.
Vertical integration is about applications and network working together end-to-end across the network to deliver intelligent services. One of the ways to realize this vertical integration is through Media Services Interface (MSI) which was discussed in an earlier blog. MSI is a software component that is embedded in video endpoints and collaboration applications allowing them to leverage intelligent network services. The network also benefits from the integration by being able to get contextual information from the endpoints and applications.
