Cisco Has No Plans To Build Service Based CDN For Video Delivery

Back in April, I reported that two colocation companies had contacted me to say that Cisco was acquiring colocation space in various third party data centers in the U.S. for what Cisco was calling a new content delivery network. While I don't know Cisco's plans when it comes to the rumors of a commercial public cloud offering, I can confirm that Cisco does not plan to offer any CDN service specifically for video delivery.

After multiple conversations last week with various groups inside Cisco, it's clear that offering video delivery services via a Cisco operated CDN does not fit into the overall plans of the company. Numerous folks at Cisco said they would not compete with the same companies they already sell gear to and that Cisco's main goal is to help third party telcos, carriers and corporations deploy their own CDN's, which sometimes requires Cisco to take space within third party colocation facilities.

I don't know whether or not this approach by Cisco also keeps them out of the cloud-based storage and application services business, but I would think the same principle of not wanting to compete with their customers would apply and for now, keeps such an offering from coming to the market.

Comments

[cancer du sein]

It would be nice to see other big vendors such as Juniper or Alcatel step up to the plate, organize a nice big test, and demonstrate to the lightreading community what they can do in this space as well, because they offer (or in the context of testing "claim to offer") very legitimate and competitive high-end transport solutions for IP video of all kinds.

[Games]

CISCO may not get into it (CDN) but that is where the growth is - especially with video-based applications. We are now into the Gigabyte Generation and all carriers better realize that traffic is going to grow exponentially from video apps and those who have been dragging their feet as to installing REAL upgrades to their network infrastructure are going to find the parade is passing them by.