CES 2009

Cisco Sees More Eos in the Media and Entertainment Future

| Jan 9, 2008 | Digital Media Infrastructure | Show Update

| Analyst: Ron Westfall

Current Perspective: Positive Vendor Importance: Moderate Market Impact: Moderate/Low

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Event Summary

January 7, 2009 -- At the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Cisco announced the availability of the Cisco Eos hosted white-label software platform that allows media and entertainment companies to create, manage, and grow online communities around their content. Cisco Eos is designed as a powerful, integrated platform that incorporates social networking, content management, and site administration features into a single operating environment, allowing content owners to deliver immersive consumer experiences, while increasing revenue opportunities and reducing operational costs.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Positive on Cisco introducing its Eos platform, which is designed to extend an enhanced online social networking-type experience to media and entertainment Web sites in order to reduce the overhead costs associated with rich media Web sites for media and entertainment companies while stimulating revenues through a hosted software model. However, Cisco still needs to prove it can adapt over the long-term to the hosted software business model in the face of a wide variety of potential rivals.

• Vendor Importance: Moderate to Cisco, as the company needed to launch the Eos platform to show that its Media Solutions Group continues to make progress using cutting edge innovation to open relatively new market opportunities for the company, as well as countering situational rivals such as Microsoft, by proving that Cisco can also meet the hosted software platform desires of media and entertainment companies.

• Market Impact: Low to moderate on the overall digital media infrastructure (DMI) market, since the Cisco Eos platform initiative is in its earliest stages and relies heavily on the still emerging software-as-a-service (SaaS) approach to gain potentially more traction with media and entertainment companies. However, major digital media infrastructure rivals need to monitor Cisco’s moves in this area, as it could open new side and backdoors for pushing other Cisco video networking product lines and it warrants a refresh on their approach to using SaaS technology as a way to expand their presence in the media and entertainment realms.

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