Cisco To Jointly Develop HD IP Video Security Cameras With Pelco

San Jose, California-headquartered Cisco Systems Inc has entered into a strategic tie-up with Clovis, California-headquartered Pelco Inc, a Schneider Electric Company. The tie-up is for development of a product in the domain of video security cameras.

Pelco is a leader in the design, development and manufacture of video and security systems. Cisco is a leader in IP networking technology. Together, the two aim to bring out the next generation of high-definition Internet Protocol (HD-IP) equipment aimed at the high-tech surveillance market. Pelco will supply Cisco with a complete line of HD imaging technologies that will be deployed by the latter to extend its existing camera line and network-centric video surveillance systems.

The video security camera shall be co-branded. The product will feature full-frame-rate video, H.264 compression, advanced low-light performance, embedded analytics, auto-focus and easy installation which are elements of Pelco’s Sarix technology. Cisco’s own IP networking features will be incorporated in this technology.

With security and surveillance becoming the need of the hour for both governments and private corporations, the market is likely to see more such collaborations in the near future.

Read more about the strategic technological tie-up between two IT biggies to complement strengths for a new product, here.

Warner Music To Use Cisco SAAS Platform

New York-headquartered Warner Music Group Corporation has announced its plan to deploy Cisco’s SAAS platform, “Eos”, to deploy sites for the company’s portfolio of artists and labels. The platform will enable Warner to create, manage and monetize social entertainment experiences that have been build around its brands.

Immediately, WMG will deploy Eos to host four sites: Paramore (rock band), Trey Songz (R&B singer), Halestorm (rock band), and Sean Paul (reggae singer). Another set of 12 new sites are on the design board for other artists and labels.

The advantage for WMG in choosing one single platform such as Eos is that any number of artist sites can be launched on Eos, but with a single unified backend that will keep site maintenance costs low, besides requiring few number of personnel for administration.

Eos has attracted the likes of WMG because of the tight integration of features such as social networking, content management and analytics into one single administrative environment, which is especially useful when there are multiple sites to be controlled concurrently. And since Eos is delivered in a hosted SAAS model, WMG will offload the burden of platform creation and maintenance to Cisco. Read more of the latest development in the entertainment industry, here.

Blackberry Smartphone To Get WiFi

London, UK-headquartered British Telecom has announced the integration between Blackberry’s Mobile Voice System (MVS) technology with its communications platform, in order to provide a new feature to Blackberry Smartphone customers: Wireless connectivity.

The significance of this integration and consequent wireless connectivity is that this phone’s users can now leverage existing Wi-Fi networks present in the office for handling voice calls. The phone’s users can seamlessly switch between Wi-Fi and cellular networks even when they are in the midst of a call. This immediately reduces their telephone bill accrued from cellular networks.

Access to contacts, calls, apps, emails, etc can be had while the phone is operating on Wi-Fi, just as conveniently as it could be on cellular networks. A single voicemail box means that phone users need not keep on dialing into multiple voicemail boxes to listen to all their messages.

BT has come out with a plan known as “One Plan Plus”, which companies can subscribe to, and through which intra-company calls can be made – including mobile phone calls – without incurring any call-forwarding charges.

BT’s technology is based on Cisco’s Unified Communication Series 500 platform.
Read more about the latest in mobile telephony from British Telecom, here.

Cisco To Acquire Pure Digital Technologies

San Francisco, California-based Cisco Systems has announced its intentions to buy privately-owned Pure Digital Technologies Inc. Founded in 2002, the San Francisco-based Pure Digital Technologies is the owner of the popular Flip Video digital camcorders.

The Flip Video camera is a simple camcorder that has onboard software called FlipShare, which users can operate to upload their video to internet sites such as YouTube, AOL Video, MySpace, etc. The cameras have as per market sources sold more than USD 200 million worth of pieces. Costing anywhere between USD 130 and USD 230 per piece, the latest model, Flip Ultra, is the best-selling camcorder on Amazon, and has already captured 13% of the camcorder market.

As per the company release, the Pure Digital team will become part of Cisco’s Consumer Business Group after the acquisition is through. Mr. Jonathan Kaplan, CEO of Pure Digital Technologies Inc, will take up a position as General Manager of the Consumer Business Group, overseeing, besides the Flip Video product line, Cisco’s Linksys home-networking, audio and media-storage products.

The deal has cost Cisco approximately USD 590 million in stock, plus up to USD 15 million in retention-based equity incentives to the erstwhile employees of Pure Digital Technologies.

Read about the latest acquistion by Cisco, here.

A New Data Center Architecture From Cisco

San Francisco, California-based Cisco Systems has come out with a new data center architecture that leverages the power of the new and emerging technologies in the virtualization domain.

The new data center architecture is built on the following components supplied by Cisco:

- a family of Ethernet and FCoE interconnect switches that consolidate I/O within the system. Cisco recommends its “UCS 6100 Series Fabric Interconnects” switches for this purpose.

- Blade server chassis. Cisco recommends its “UCS 5100 Series Blade Server Chassis” that supports up to 8 blade servers.

- Fabric extenders that bring unified fabric into the blade server chassis. Cisco’s choice is “UCS 2100 Series Fabric Extenders”.

- Set of blade servers. Cisco offers “UCS B-Series Blade Servers” based on Intel’s Xeon processors.

- Network adapters. Cisco has offered three types of “UCS Network Adapters” each in a mezzanine-card form factor.

- An embedded software that overlooks all operations. Cisco’s architecture solution includes “UCS Manager” software.

All the above components have been packaged into a single “Unified Computing System” (UCS). The UCS provides virtualized environments that can address changes in business and IT environments.

Read more about the new architecture being offered by Cisco, here.

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