October 18th, 2007
Cisco introduces 'Entertainment operating system'
Dan Scheinman, senior vice president and general manager of the Cisco Media Solutions Group, provided some insight about his company’s ambitions in networking, the social kind rather than the infrastructure for moving digital bits. He introduced Eos (not to be confused with Cisco’s IOS or EOS), an entertainment operating system, which he described as a platform for creating and managing a community-based entertainment experience.
Based on technology and teams from recent acquisitions Tribe.net and Five Across, Cisco has 40 developers in San Francisco working on the white label platform that he said would “combine the best of community, video and discovery on an integrated platform.” Cisco will launch Eos next year. “We will be relevant in this marketplace,” Scheinman said.
He said he was interested in what bloggers had to say about the platform, but there isn’t much to comment on at this point.
Scheinman talked about the marriage of Web 2.0 and Cisco, bringing the ability to combine discovery and the networks. “We need to be in a world where content can find you, where search is predictive.”
In other words, consumers will be faced with more and more Web content and traditional discovery methods are breaking down, and Cisco will be there to save users from Web pains with an end-to-end solution, from the switches, routers and set-top boxes to an “entertainment-class, community-based”user experience. A scenario that warms the heart of John Chambers.
“We believe the world is ripe for a platform where the experience of content is easy, simple and fun and people want to use it repeatedly,” Scheinman concluded.
We will have to wait to see what Cisco means by an “entertainment-class, community-based” user experience. In the meantime, Cisco has the attention of Apple, Microsoft and others who want to be the entertainment platform of the future.
Dan Farber, editor-in-chief of CNET News.com, has more than 20 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
