Executive Thought Leadership

Video Changes Everything

Video anywhere and everywhere. Video in real time and on demand. Video accessed as effortlessly as a phone message or Web page. Video on your handheld and video on the Jumbotron.

Pervasive video is already changing the way businesses collaborate, innovate, market their products and services, and interact with customers. And this dawning era of video is giving rise to new markets and services, and creating innovative change in traditional industries such as education, entertainment, and medicine.

In the home, as bandwidth increases, on-demand video will provide consumers with a choice among literally millions of hours of professional and consumer-created content—video that is seamlessly delivered, optimized, and stored over intelligent Internet Protocol (IP) networks.

Revolutionary Trends

Of course, video itself is nothing new. But two trends make today’s video revolution different from, previous disruptive technology revolutions, such as e-mail, the Internet, and mobile telephones.

First, this video revolution is being led by the end user, both at home and at work. In the past, service providers and enterprise IT departments largely fueled the development and adoption of technology. Now, consumers are the driving force, with a seemingly insatiable demand for innovative video-based services in the home. And they’re taking these new video preferences with them to work, where they have the same—or even higher—expectations for communicating and collaborating.

Secondly, video will soon be pervasively integrated. By this we mean that consumers will have full control over where they watch, when they watch, and on what device they watch their favorite videos—be it a personal computer, television, mobile phone, gaming platform, GPS, or some device yet to be invented. Video Changes Everything This disruptive technology is fueling one of the fastest-growing and most exciting trends in decades.

The enabler of pervasive video is the underlying IP network. An intelligent and converged network allows both businesses and consumers to freely distribute and receive video content to any video device through a set of common services—some built into the network, some added on. The network is the universal platform that connects content, devices, and the people who use them.

New Roles for Video

Where will the video revolution take us? Enterprises and medium-sized organizations are using video-based digital media signage to roll out and scale content easily and flexibly to a network of digital displays in various locations in stores, branch offices, break rooms, or lobbies. Signage is dynamic now in a way it never could be before. Now it can not only be changed frequently to provide up-to-the-minute information, but it can be targeted to influence specific audiences, such as shoppers at point of purchase, or diners in a restaurant. It can also incorporate animation to attract attention in a way that static signage can’t.

In manufacturing and design organizations, teams are trading ideas by using video technology to view each other’s work and to collaborate in real time.

Executive-to-employee communications that are streamed as video, whether real or time-shifted, draw attention and have an impact they didn’t have before.

Companies are increasingly using video to make it easier for customers to use their products. On Cisco.com, for example, we’ve posted streaming video instruction manuals for our most popular products. In the retail and gaming industries, real-time IP-based video surveillance and security systems are reducing theft and loss.

Training is another activity that pervasive video is transforming. In the past, employees often had to spend time and money on travel to receive training, but now they are increasingly taking advantage of interactive video tools that help bring training right to them, wherever they are. Video at work adds up to greater productivity, lower costs, and improved collaboration.

Searching for Exponential Bandwidth

There’s still plenty of work to be done before the full promise of video is realized, particularly in the home. The greatest challenges ahead belong to service providers. They have the most to gain—or lose—as video use spreads. And it hinges on delivering the sheer volume of data that video demands.

Consider this: watching a single, two-hour high-definition movie requires about the same amount of downloaded data as clicking on a new Website every five minutes, eight hours a day, every single day for a year. Here’s another one of those amazing statistics: In 2010—just a few years from now—any 20 typical suburban homes will use more bandwidth than all users did on the entire Internet in 1995.

But even beyond meeting this insatiable demand for bandwidth, service providers must develop new value added services, pricing models, and partnerships to help them enrich the customer experience and integrate data, voice, and video across all devices. It’s not just about any content to any screen—it’s about extending the user experience by enabling more choice, better navigation, faster interaction, higher quality, and a more intuitive experience.

With “triple play” offerings of voice, high-speed Internet, and television, we’re already seeing service providers increase consumer value by consolidating services and providing a single point of interaction across all bundled elements. And leading service providers are deploying intelligent applications to help personalize the customer experience. For example, they are streaming television episodes to cell phones on demand and providing GPS tools that match information to a user’s location. Television viewers can record programming to watch when it’s convenient for them.

Cisco’s broad suite of products and solutions help service providers successfully navigate this demanding user-driven world. The Cisco IP Next-Generation Network, for example, is designed specifically to address the complexities of multi-service, multi-device, multi-transport delivery. We are helping service providers accelerate service velocity, deliver a better user experience, and enhance customer care.

At Cisco, we are proud to be taking a leadership role in this important new stage in technology development and in the evolution of communications. We invite you to join us in exploring all the different ways that video can make a difference to your business and your life.

By Charles H. Giancarlo, Chief Development Officer, Cisco As executive vice president and chief development officer, 14-year Cisco veteran Charles H. Giancarlo leads a team of more than 20,000 engineers and is responsible for the overall strategy and execution of Cisco technology research and development. Additionally, Giancarlo is President of Cisco-Linksys, LLC.