Cisco virtualizes multiscreen TV functions

Cisco has announced a virtualization-based expansion to its video processing solution, Videoscape, for multiscreen TV service providers.  The upgrade to the solution now includes the delivery of advertising, security, packaging, encoding, playout and content delivery.

Videoscape Virtualized Video Processing (V2P) is intended to form part of Cisco’s wider virtualization portfolio, Evolved Services Platform (ESP). ESP is based on the rapidly developing carrier network virtualization industry, benefitting from evolutions in cloud, software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV). The strategy virtualizes and orchestrates a variety of business and technological areas for service providers and media companies.

By utilising SDN, NFV and cloud, V2P enables the consolidation of various hardware and software components involved with the delivery of the multiscreen experience, with a dedicated orchestrator to manage and deliver individual forms of video to each screen.

The announcement once again reiterates the industry’s evolution towards a virtualized operating environment for service delivery through the network, which at this point is benefitting from an extraordinary level of hype.

The centralised control point for V2P is very much in alignment with the manageability philosophy presented by SDN, and the consolidation capabilities NFV. Cisco claims that V2P will bring added agility and velocity capabilities for building and delivering new services, as well as a reduction in production costs, and increased revenues, but then so do most other such prducts.

At this stage, the merits of NFV are well publicised and very well known; with a substantial level of rhetoric from the vendor community confirming how service providers stand to benefit from using it. Roll-outs aren’t far away, if not already in the pipeline. What would be very interesting would be for a service provider to announce their NFV success with actual numbers, and provide more evidence of how their offering is differentiated from the plethora of other similar solutions flooding the market.