Cisco Buys Into Digital Media Again

Dmitry Sokolov

Less than a year after the acquisition of Tandberg and previous acquisition of Pure Digital (makers of Flip Camcorder), Cisco recently announced intent to acquire yet another media company – ExtendMedia.

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.

However, ExtendMedia’s combination of CMS, AdBridge (Ad platform with POP and live or cached advertising) and Publisher 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).


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