Introduction & The World of medianets
So this is my first blog on Cisco SP360 and I have no idea what to expect - but I do have a hunch that this might be a great platform to share, discuss and debate what I’m witnessing in the video and rich media domain around the world.
To introduce myself, I’m responsible for marketing Cisco’s vast service provider video portfolio. These are exciting times to be at Cisco as the evolution towards rich media networks has its challenges and opportunities for us and many in this space. The question in my mind is if we’ll adapt fast enough and capture markets in transition or be left out to fend after legacy systems.
One of the core tenants of our strategy is to recognize this transition from data optimized networks to rich media optimized networks and the effects on consumer experiences. As Vint Cerf said to me during a discussion last year: “the internet was designed for data based communications not rich media applications as we see today”. Networks must fundamentally adapt to deliver the next generation of experiences. To this point, Cisco introduced a concept called medianet last December with the premise of transitioning towards rich media networks that are end-point aware, network aware and media aware. The premise behind this concept is that compelling user experiences in a rich media environment face multiple challenges with a variety of formats, codecs, devices and bandwidth constraints that will need to be overcome. How and where to do this has been a subject of much debate between application developers, network providers and device manufacturers.
Welcome to the debate! I plan to discuss this and many other topics around the world of video and rich media over the next few months.
Posted by Murali Nemani at 10:52AM PST
Maria Tseng Mar 30, 2009
Uh, what’s the difference between high data rate and rich media? Maybe I’m being too simplistic, but I thought that in IP networks, or indeed digital everything, it’s all data, and the ‘media’ part is how the data is rendered at the network edge. Perhaps I need a more layman-oriented explanation of how Cisco and Vint Cerf differentiate between data and media for IP networks?
It would be very interesting indeed to have a framework, the components of the MediaNet, then have participants in the debate expand on the topics. For example, what topics should service providers primarily participate in? Which ones should consumers take a lead for? What are the topics would benefit from equal participation by the two groups? What topics might benefit most if Cisco were to guide the discussion?
Maybe future blogposts will address topics and questions where player in the 4 domains will be invited to comment?
1. Service Providers
2. Consumers
3. Cisco and its competitors
4. other influencers such as regulatory bodies or technology enablers…
You know, SP360 so far has primarily been a one-to-many style of communication. Might I suggest crafting it more in the style of a-few-to-many by including commentary from the four groups named above in blogposts? Maybe guest blogs…??? Or adding themes to the SP360 blog…???
BTW, it’s ‘Vint’ and in Vinton Cerf.