Cisco moving forward

You might have seen the news today from Cisco:

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2008/prod_092408.html?POSITION=LINK&COUNTRY_SITE=us&CAMPAIGN=NewsAtCiscoLatestNewsfromCDCHP&CREATIVE=LINK1&REFERRING_SITE=CISCO.COMHOMEPAGE


But they just made a new set of announcements in the collaboration space.

I was going to make a post a few days ago..and as a blogger that discusses industry rumors, its interesting sometimes posting them. You can make your prediction or pass on the rumor and if it turns out right, you appear as the smarty pants in the room. If you miss it, you look like you're the dumbest. Well... I'll give you the rumor...even though it wasnt announced this week. (I still believe it will though).

The rumor is that Cisco is going to come out with a mid-priced video endpoint. It will be priced no more than a Polycom HDX and will be 1080P in quality. It will be a rack mount unit with a extneral camera and unlike all of the other Cisco telepresence systems, it will not ship with a monitor (the customer will supply their own). I havent been able to find info yet of whether or not Cisco developed this internally or used a partner. I do believe that it is NOT the same hardware architecture as the telepresence systems; i believe Cisco used its famous ability to get the price point of the hardware down so that they could crank these out at high margin to Cisco. (high margin to Cisco resellers is only dream... the typical Cisco reseller makes just 2% on the hardware)

So..thats the rumor... take it or leave it.

So...thoughts on the announcement they made. I would say...impressive... they are starting to tie together and putting on all the chrome they will need to compete with MS in this market. I found the announcement about Jabber pretty interesting as well:

http://blogs.cisco.com/ar/comments/cisco_to_acquire_jabber/

Of course all of us know the Jabber protocol as a fairly standard and widely used IM protocol. Its good to see these standards protocols being used. (although some would argue that SIP would be the better route)

The only thing I see missing is tighter integration to room system video.

But...one area that I was surprised to see was that Webex Connect is looking very much like Sharepoint. This is really interesting...not from a app perspective...more from a strategey perspective. Cisco is solidly jumping out of real time (synchronous) communications and moving into asynchronous communications. This is a point of demarcation really...and maybe the start of a new wider IT strategey for Cisco that moves them out of the Network or Telecom group in the sales cycle.

Video Consolidation

I've been spending a lot of time talking to channel partners as well as manufacturers and building upon my understanding of the greater market.

As we wait to hear the final news about TAA... it makes me think about why there isn't other consolidation?

This isn't short term..I wonder who's going to buy who this quarter..but more longer term thinking.

If you're in the video business and you've got engineers on staff with experience in building av i/o, a/v switching, UI, base platforms, audio codecs, or video codecs... why not look at greater value through scale? Why shouldnt a Polycom be merged with digital signage player such as Symon? Or why shouldn't TAA merge with a IPTV player like PRN? Or why doesn't PLCM buy up some other audio companies like AudioCodes, Digium, or I3? Or maybe Sony should buy Clearone?

I think there is so much unrealized value out there. Think about it... why should TAA spend time working on h.264 code and PRN do the same? Or PLCM spend time on some audio codec that I3 needs as well. Not to mention the back end business aspects that are redundant across so many companies.

Bob & Mike over at PLCM really need to take some action and show that they want to keep running the company or intend to sell it. If your competitor is going to merge with a telephony partner, should you? Does being "me too" get you to the finish line before everyone else? Only if you can execute better. Maybe taking a different approach might work? Most of the resellers of video conferencing also do AV work. They all have not only greater revenue streams at selling AV then they do at VTC, but also fatter margins.

A great example...in higher end VTC rooms, they typically install a AMX or Crestron controller. $15K or more can be spent just on that aspect of the room. (I really need to blog about my thoughts on why this is necessary...another time). I don't know the size ofthat market (might be good to research), but it appears quite rich.

Why not complementary technologies? Digital Signage for one. Its at least $2.7B in size. Its complementary technology (from the building block level). While, it might not complimentary on the sales side, it would give you scale on the engineering side. IPTV could be another, and so, on.