Here today at CES 2014,the show is kicking off in full swing. With attendance of over 150,000 people expected, the buzz is building off of last year around the latest 4K/UltraHD televisions, smart devices, and wearables with the overall theme of the show being the Internet of Everything. But while the name of the show focuses on consumer electronics, what isn't as widely recognized is that CES is also the largest service provider tradeshow in the Americas with operators coming from around the globe to learn about new services they can offer those devices to increase their revenue, new ways to offer those services to save on operating costs, and news ways to roll those services out quickly to catch market opportunities.
Yesterday, Cisco announced ways for service providers to address each of those fundamental business care-abouts by announcing it is virtualizing Videoscape -its leading immersive video solution -by putting it into the cloud. This announcement has three standout offers:
These announcements map to the Virtualization vision that Pankaj Patel, our EVP of Engineering, highlighted last month as it is an example of even more ways Cisco is virtualizing its capabilities into software, blends both hardware and software to get the best outcome, and is looking at the issue from a broader architectural and solution perspective instead of a more narrow functional specific view. And of note, it is just one of a number of such announcements we have coming early this year, with the next only weeks away.
More on that later, as for now, it is back to hosting the more than 500 service provider customer meetings we have planned for this week in humidity-deprived Las Vegas. We'll be talking about all these video announcements and much more and working with customers to further address their business challenges. And on later today, our CEO will be deliver a keynote speech on how the Internet of Everything provides great opportunities for all in this ecosystem with the service providers having a unique ability to sit in the center of it all.