Video continues to be a burgeoning content area for the enterprise. Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) has introduced a suite of products it's calling the Enterprise Content Delivery System, which provides a solution for managing the video load on the wide area network and helping control the cost of extending video applications enterprisewide.

The new product line, which starts at $4395, is comprised of hardware appliances and Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) virtual blade software. ECDS can be deployed in any appliance-based or existing virtualized environment at almost any place in the network, according to a July 7 Cisco press release.

The suite builds upon and works with Cisco Show and Cisco Share collaboration and video applications. It also makes video content more interoperable by supporting third-party video applications and mobile endpoints through smartphones and tablets.

ECDS doesn't appear to stray too far from it's Cisco medianet roots, however, and uses a Cisco TelePresence Content Server workflow for video creation, management, delivery and sharing, according to a press release.

Another feature being touted by Cisco is improved live-video scalability. "Instead of sending 10 video streams of a broadcast to 10 users at a branch office, ECDS sends one stream to the branch and automatically splits that stream at the branch into one for each end user, thus providing better quality video and minimizing bandwidth consumption," explains a Cisco press release.

It can also efficiently cache and preposition video so it can be saved locally during off-peak-hours for later access by multiple users.

For more:
- see the Cisco press release 

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