Cisco’s Media Solutions Group eyes stake in media firms
on February 12th, 2008 at 1:23 pmMUMBAI: Cisco’s media solutions group is looking for strategic partners to introduce its content delivery offerings in India and the global networking major might also consider taking equity stake in them, a senior official said.
Cisco Media Solutions Group senior vice-president and general manager Dan Scheinman said, “We have significant investments lined up to scale up the media offerings for the Indian media sector and it includes picking up strategic stakes in Indian media companies.”
Cisco plans to benefit from these investments while developing online solutions, he added. Having committed $200 million for India, the company has already invested about $100 million in many companies. Cisco also plans to launch its Entertainment Operating System (EOS) product, a tool to deliver multimedia content to online communities later this year.
“Two online fan communities, run by the National Hockey League and the NASCAR auto-racing organisation, are running alpha versions of EOS today. And with the kind of following for popular sports like cricket in which, I hear, there are plans to launch league circuits similar to NHL or NASCAR, can prove to ideal markets for such a product offering,” he said.
With EOS, Cisco is following other IT biggies likes IBM and Microsoft. IBM early last year entered the enterprise social networking space with its product offering Lotus Connections, preceded with Microsoft’s launch of a new version of its collaboration software, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007.
