International networking giant Cisco is no longer a routing and switching company as it looks to leverage opportunities supported by the network.
Speaking this week at the company's annual Networkers conference in Sun City, Cisco's senior VP of its emerging markets technology group, Marthin De Beer, showcased the four emerging technologies expected to make the company $1 billion a year.
As leader of the group's internal start-up businesses, South African-born De Beer says Cisco continues to fine-tune its offerings through innovation or renovation.
The first emerging technology on display was the company's TelePresence offering, which brings a new dimension to video conferencing. Launched in December, the TelePresence solution delivers video resolution of 1 080p - twice that of high-definition TV; surround sound, to provide environment authenticity; and bandwidth usage of 2Mb.
High bandwidth costs
"TelePresence introduces high-resolution, life-size video into conferencing. In this product we have addressed many of the problems that plagued its predecessor. It's easy to use for end-users, requires very little set-up or support, and provides an experience so close to real life that users forget there is technology involved at all," says De Beer.
While Cisco is in the process of rolling out this solution in its own offices around the world, its South African offices will not be one of the recipients. The reason for this, says De Beer, is the country's expensive broadband.
De Beer's second offering sees a new take on digital media: "Most digital media solutions require a PC at the end point and provide only static content. Cisco's solution uses the network as the platform, allowing companies to dynamically respond to changing environments."
He adds: "When you consider an event like 2010, these solutions could be used during the event to broadcast advertising or the game. After the event, the monitors could be individually used to direct people away from heavy congestion points."
Next is a revolution of physical security offerings, primarily in the field of video surveillance.
Emergency communications
"This is an old industry which was ripe for innovation. We are providing several offerings which translate analogue video footage into digital streams; as well as solutions which enable efficient storage and search functionalities of video data," he says.
On the back of several high-profile disasters in the US, the company's last technology is its IP interoperable communications solution (IPICS).
"IPICS enables a wide variety of communication devices to turn into virtual talk radio devices. It is particularly apt in disaster situations, where different emergency response teams operate on different devices or frequencies and, therefore, cannot co-ordinate with each other," he says.
In addition to these new releases, De Beer says the company has about 15 businesses in the pipeline, which are expected to be ready for market in the next five years.
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