Video IP Project Boosts Network's Profile

Cisco's video network is one of the most prolific in the world. Running video atop its IP backbone, the company produces about 400 video-on-demand presentations and 50 live broadcasts each month. Nearly half are purely for corporate communication, such as CEO John Chambers' monthly company briefings, and the other half provide information to Cisco's global sales force. The IP multicast technology is also handy for training the company's far-flung salespeople and more than 300,000 channel partners, so they can keep up with Cisco's frequent announcements on products and upgrades.

"We need to get that new product information to our sales force and channel partners quickly, and video streaming is a cost-effective way to do that," says Michael Mitchell, director of Cisco Media Network and Cisco's Internet learning solutions group. Mitchell notes that Cisco saves about $133 million a year in training costs by using both video and Web-based e-learning.

Cisco Media Network is both the name of the service and the organization that provides video to the company. Users can take advantage of the company's homegrown and third-party commercial video tools to produce their own videos or come to Mitchell's group for help. "I'm not a content cop--anyone can author any content they want," Mitchell says.

Although streaming video has become a popular medium for getting the word out to the company's employees, partners and customers worldwide, the Media Network group is still the black sheep of the family at Cisco. Vestiges of the group's origins as a grassroots effort remain--the division is still part of the human resources organization, not IT. And though Cisco sells video technology and products as a supplier, the Media Network group historically has had to fight for every budget dollar. Mitchell won't reveal his organization's video budget, but he says it hasn't changed much in eight years. "It's still tight," he says. Media Network does have access to technology and skills that would not be available at a non-networking company.

The organization's latest project: integrating videoconferencing with its IP-based video-streaming applications using H.264 video compression. Cisco runs 2,000 videoconference sessions per month, most of which require the company to physically plug the feed from a videoconferencing unit into an encoding server, or to stream the videoconference using H.263, an older video-compression scheme that provides video at low-bandwidth speeds, starting at 128 Kbps. But H.263 is also infamous for delivering lower-quality transmission than proprietary streaming codecs like Windows Media and Real Networks' Media, so Cisco is considering building an H.264 bridge for streaming videoconferences over its backbone.The company is running only one or two videoconferences a month over the IP backbone because its existing setup is so klunky. But the convergence of videoconferencing and video streaming on the backbone is improving, Mitchell says.

Live Test Bed

Cisco's Media Network also serves as a live test bed for the company's latest video offerings to the enterprise market, including its new Business Video Solution, which is based on Cisco's internal system. A key element is a Web-based video-on-demand content-authoring and management application from Interactive Video Technologies (IVT) called MediaPlatform, which lets users create, customize and monitor an IP video session. Business Video Solution also includes some video best practices that Cisco developed through its own experience.

But Cisco's internal IP broadcasts aren't nearly as feature-rich today as, say, a Meetingplace Web broadcast, Mitchell admits. There's no support for application sharing, and the interactive component is mostly just polling the audience, so there's no true online collaboration, he explains. The typical session is usually a one-way broadcast, such as a product manager giving a presentation and Cisco salespeople submitting questions via the Web. Most Cisco sites get television-quality, 900-Kbps video streams from the network, which runs on a mix of Cisco equipment, including its Application and Content Networking System (ACNS) multimedia platform and IP/TV system. MediaPlatform runs on four Windows 2000 servers, and Cisco's remote sites have Cisco 500 Series Content Engine appliances that cache and deliver the video. The Content Distribution Manager in San Jose is a server for managing content delivery as well as bandwidth utilization. Cisco configures it to set limits on how much bandwidth a VoD session can take, or whether it can be accessed during business hours, for instance.

QoS (Quality of Service) keeps Cisco's backbone humming along, even with the increasing demands from video. The company uses its own CBWFQ (class-based weighted fair queuing) QoS technology and the DiffServ QoS standard in its routers. These protocols ensure that different types of traffic are categorized by a company-defined priority and get bandwidth according to a preset policy. Cisco ranks videoconferencing, for example, ahead of video-on-demand and broadcast on the network.Cisco's biggest problem with video streaming over IP is ensuring end-to-end delivery of the video traffic. If each desktop isn't properly configured for video, there are no guarantees that a video feed will be delivered. The company solved this glitch by pushing out standard configurations to all sites.

Years ago, Cisco held video meetings by renting out a television studio and asking employees to attend at local United Artists theaters. Each broadcast cost the company about $200,000, but it was still cheaper than flying employees into San Jose. Now, with IP video, each meeting costs about $8,000, which includes camera operations, logistics and depreciation on Cisco's state-of-the art studio.

Meanwhile, users of the video network are becoming more demanding. "They want 900 Kbps, even if they're staying in a hotel in Bangkok," Mitchell says. "Users want to keep seeing the quality of video get better." Michael Mitchell: Director, Cisco Media Network

MICHAEL MITCHELL, 34, IS DIRECTOR OF CISCO SYSTEMS' INTERNAL VIDEO SERVICE FOR EMPLOYEES AND PARTNERS, WITH A STREAMING VIDEO NETWORK THAT RUNS ATOP THE COMPANY'S IP BACKBONE. MITCHELL HEADS UP DEPLOYMENT OF THE COMPANY'S VIDEO-ON-DEMAND AND VIDEO BROADCAST SESSIONS, AS WELL AS VIDEOCONFERENCING OVER THE NETWORK. HE HOLDS A B.A. IN MASS COMMUNICATION FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, AND HAS BEEN WITH CISCO FOR EIGHT YEARS.

Next time I'll: Push harder for IP video standards--H.264 and MPEG-4--from the ground up. Today we use H.263 and MPEG-1, as well as proprietary codecs for streaming like Windows Media and Real [Networks' Media]. I'd like to be standards-based across the board.Most ill-timed video glitch: Our Web server went down during a companywide meeting a year ago. A CGI script for the meeting announcement took all the memory on the Web server. We had tested the server for the meeting, but not for the announcement.

Why I'm Cisco's toughest video critic: Because we run 40 to 50 live broadcasts a month, 300 to 400 video-on-demand sessions. A couple of thousand screaming Unix users and a highly technical employee base can work around you if they want or need to.

Why the Media Network group is under HR, not IT: It's important to map business requirements to IT deployments. I don't think they know where to put me.

Biggest mistake in technology circles: Not including a business partner in some product initiatives.

Best advice: Nice guys don't finish last.Biggest bet I've ever made: Buying the property for our house with no road, power, phone lines or permission to build. We moved in six years later.

For fun: Married, two kids, one dog, and I work at Cisco.

Wheels: Jeep. I live up a dirt road.You'd think pitching IP video to Cisco Systems executives would be a no-brainer. Not so for the company's Media Network group, which had to cost-justify its technology implementation just like any other IT initiative.

To get the green light for IP video, the media group had to convice Cisco executives in IT, finance, sales and HR that the video network would increase business productivity.

"We had to show we were doing this because it was the best way, not just because we're Cisco," says Michael Mitchell, Cisco Media Network's director. The media group argued that streaming IP was not only cheaper, but would let Cisco track the distribution of the video information, which was difficult with mass broadcasts and physical distribution of CD-ROMs or DVDs.There was a time when the video network was a leap of faith. Cisco started building its $7 million state-of-the-art broadcast studio in San Jose, Calif., during the dot-com crash two years ago--at a time when the company had missed its financial projections. "We had to constantly justify the project, but it was the right thing to do," Mitchell says. "It's already paid for itself."

The studio project was approved initially because the company was doing about 50 IP streaming broadcasts a month in its rented television studio at $20,000 a pop. "We could cost-justify the studio build, even though it was painful at times," Mitchell recalls. "It was more cost-effective to use the IP network."

It's too early to say how and what Mitchell and his team will pitch with the company's next project--integrating videoconferencing with H.264 video compression--because the group hasn't finalized its proposal, but merging videoconferencing and video streaming is a natural evolution, Mitchell says, not to mention more economical. And one thing's for sure: It will still be about the bottom line. "Money talks. At the end of the day, it's all about business impact," he says.