Less than a year after the acquisition of Tandberg [1] and previous acquisition of Pure Digital [2] (makers of Flip Camcorder), Cisco recently announced intent to acquire yet another media company – ExtendMedia [3].
[4]The motivation behind this appears focused on consumer-level service provider media delivery:
“ExtendMedia will strengthen Cisco’s position in the delivery of IP video services by enabling service providers to provide a more interactive and personal experience and to optimize quality for consumer viewing devices.” – the full press release can be found here [5].
However, ExtendMedia’s combination of CMS [6], AdBridge [7] (Ad platform with POP and live or cached advertising) and Publisher [8] engines looks very much like components for a solid digital signage platform…
Will Cisco DMS engineers have a chance to look (and borrow from) under the hood of Extend Media’s engine? Hopefully they do, as having used the DMS system first hand, the addition of a strong Ad Manager coupled with a pending DMS hardware refresh (early 2011?) can make Cisco DMS a real contender for some of the larger network RFPs (outside their typical education and event center verticals).