Enterprise video is experiencing tremendous change in terms of adoption, traffic growth, business model evolution, and technology innovation.

We recently undertook an extensive study to uncover key insights about the use of business video in U.S. enterprises. The survey is part of the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group’s Horizons program, which combines multimodal research and analysis to identify business transformation opportunities fueled by technology innovation.

Since the purpose of this study was to understand how the use of video is evolving in the enterprise, we chose to seek insight from executives at enterprises with at least 1,000 employees, from across the United States.  For this study, we recruited more than 450 enterprises from more than 20 industries across the United States, including both Cisco customers and non-Cisco customers.

Because we wanted to understand both end-user and IT perspectives on business video, participants included both business executives (i.e., from non-IT functions such as sales, marketing, finance, and engineering), and IT executives.

Our research uncovered several key findings:

#1: Business Video is already widespread throughout the enterprise.

• We discovered that business video is already well entrenched in the enterprise. More than three out of four business executives said they use either one-way video or two-way video—or both—at least once a week.
• This trend is growing: more than 70 percent of respondents said they will increase their use of business video in the next two years.

#2: A majority of executives are active in both recording videos and viewing employee-created videos, and they plan to do more of both.

• More than 70 percent of corporate executives expect their use of one-way and two-way video to grow over the next two years. Currently, 34 percent of business executives record business videos on a daily basis, and 62 percent of business executives watch employee-created videos at least once a week. Read More »

Tags: business video, Cisco IBSG, collaboration, enterprise video, Horizons, mobile computing, mobility, network, research, study, survey, video

Could you live without the Internet?

If you think that the answer to this question is an easy “yes,” then you may find the results from Cisco’s 2011 Connected World Technology Report a bit shocking. Cisco commissioned an international workforce study of nearly 3000 people asking their views on the network in their lives.

A few choice highlights:

Read More »

Tags: amazon, Cisco, connected world technology report, human network, internet, internet importance, internet of things, iPad, network, ronan singh lach, skype, trailspace.com, wireless

Public sector decision makers are under enormous pressure to deliver results in difficult and uncertain times. In late 2010 and early 2011, the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) conducted in-depth interviews with more than 100 senior public sector executives from around the world—at the city, regional, and national levels. Responses from these officials were remarkably consistent regarding the key challenges they face in a world undergoing significant economic, political, environmental, and social transitions.

Some of these public leaders expressed concerns about their organizations’ capacity to respond to new policy and service demands, budget reductions, and the need to engage new technology platforms for innovation and service delivery. Other challenges related to the public sector’s ability to help cities, regions, and countries navigate the current uncertain and volatile environment.   Read More »

Tags: Cisco, IBSG, innovation, internet, meeting of the minds, network, productivity, public sector, public sector reform, resilience, socioeconomic challenges

Anyone who gets behind the wheel is painfully aware of the personal costs of driving an automobile, including $4-per-gallon gasoline and expensive maintenance.

But what about the societal costs of personal transportation?

Of the estimated $3 trillion yearly cost of personal transportation in the United States, for example, nearly 40 percent ($1.1 trillion) is “societal,” related to congestion, crashes, parking, roads, traffic services, and pollution.¹ These costs are, in fact, a “hidden tax” amounting to nearly $7,000 per vehicle per year.

The Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) believes that vehicle connectivity can act as a catalyst to help pay for the societal costs of personal transportation, while unlocking additional benefits.

What’s more, governments now have the opportunity to work with other key stakeholders—insurance companies, automotive manufacturers, and service providers—to create a next-generation transportation business model around connected vehicles and a smart, connected traffic infrastructure. Read More »

Tags: Cisco, connected vehicle, government, IBSG, meeting of the minds, mobility, network, personal mobility, personal transportation, smart road pricing, smart traffic infrastructure

In ExtremeTech (http://www.extremetech.com/computing/94428-will-100-megabit-internet-connections-destroy-the-web-as-we-know-it), Sebastian Anthony recently asked the question:

“What do you think will happen when every home is connected to the internet via 100 or 1,000Mbps Ethernet or fiber?”

He goes on to give an answer that is yes, under the assumption that the 100Mbps is symmetrical.

“At some point in the not-so-distant future, then, we’re all going to be connected to the web at LAN-like speeds — 100 megabits per second up and down — and this, just like the advent of the telephone, will change the world as we know it. … ”

“Instead of your entire life being represented by a handful of bytes in amongst Facebook’s faceless sea, symmetric connections will enable the web to becomemetropolitan. Your presence on the web will be your home. ”

“The end result would be a truly decentralized internet that closely mimics human settlement and society. There will still be nodes on the internet where more people congregate — the bars, clubs, and McDonalds of the real world — but for the most part, a symmetric web would let people hang out and connect with the people they care about, and ignore everyone else.”

This is my definition of real cloud computing – something way beyond the standard view which is not much more than a new marketing twist on the old time-sharing data centers.

Tags: broadband, cloud, cloud_computing, IBSG, internet, network, virtual communications