This new class of technologies is designed to enable advanced communications, collaboration and entertainment experiences through video- and rich media-optimized service provider, business, and home networks, known as “medianets.”
Data-based communications are being replaced by video and rich media, which is straining the architectural foundations of both public and private networks serving consumers and businesses. This network transformation toward rich media-optimized networks is the driver behind Cisco’s video strategy and represents Internet networking’s growing impact on the daily lives of consumers and professionals alike.
“The Internet and IP networks as we know them are changing,” said Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of Cisco’s Emerging Technologies group. “In the near future, 90 percent of consumer network traffic will be video and rich media, and new ‘medianet’ technologies and devices will drive the evolution not only to new networks, but immersive new experiences made possible by combining video, rich media, voice and data on a single networked platform. As businesses look to reduce costs and increase productivity, ‘medianet’ solutions will enable new methods of networked collaboration and virtualization, such as seamless language translations over Cisco TelePresence, which will eliminate communication barriers in the workplace.”
Additionally, video-specific findings from the Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast for 2007-2012 were released today, providing new insights on a variety of consumer and business IP networking trends driven largely by the increasing use of video and Web 2.0 social networking and collaboration applications:
• Professional/traditional broadcast video content will become 80% of all Internet video viewed on PCs/laptops by 2012.
• Traffic associated with user-generated video content will triple from 2008 to 2012.
• More than 4 billion video streams per month will be delivered through Internet-enabled set-top boxes* by 2012. (*Internet-enabled set-top boxes include IPTV set-tops, next-generation cable set-tops, gaming consoles, and third-party standalone set-tops.)
• Global VoD traffic more than doubled from 2007 to 2008 (increased by a factor of 2.4).
“Video is a transformational force in the world today,” said Tony Bates, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Service Provider business group. “We are seeing consumers and enterprises embracing the power of video to foster better communications, entertainment and information gathering. Cisco foresees a new generation of Internet-based video and multimedia experiences running on ‘medianets’ that will create new opportunities for service providers, content providers, and businesses – and entirely new experiences for consumers.”
