At CES this year we announced the expansion of Videoscape to the cloud. By launching Videoscape Cloud Software and Videoscape Cloud Services, we are empowering our customers with flexibility and agility to provision and scale infrastructure on demand, service velocity to introduce new functionality more rapidly, and cost optimization from more manageable and predictable cost structures.

For some of you, reading about Cisco + Cloud Software is nothing new; Videoscape is yet another example of how we are taking our industry proven and robust software capabilities and making them available for implementation as cloud software applications. Been there, done that.

Yet we have raised some eyebrows with Cisco + Cloud Services. What experience does Cisco have delivering software as a service (SaaS), and what service provider video/media entertainment provider expertise do we have operating SaaS models?

In today's blog, I will answer the question of why our customers should feel confident with Cisco as their Cloud Services partner by pointing to Cisco's established SaaS leadership as well as our domain expertise in the service provider video and media/entertainment space. In a follow up blog, I will addressour technical differentiation as a SaaS video provider.

Engaged in multimedia collaboration lately?

Did you know that Cisco WebEx operates thesecond-largest cloud servicefor business applications for collaboration, hosting over 2.6 billion meeting minutes each month and over 46 million monthly meeting attendees? With so much trust in Cisco to host business critical collaboration applications, it is clear that we have industry leading capabilities as a cloud service provider. So how about the video service and media/entertainment provider space?

Tried to find your favorite TV shows?

We are powering a hosted, web-based service that coordinates enriched metadata to power the discovery of TV content across TV schedules, online sources, and physical media. This cloud service is offered as a white label operation to our service provider video and media/entertainment customers. One example is a major North American cable operator using this service for enhanced online TV content discovery. For US and UK audiences, you can get a glimpse of what this cloud service can do at LocateTV.com, and sign up for your own personalized content discovery, listings and reminders.

Turnkey video SaaS

Our video SaaS experience goes back more than 10 years, reaching broadcasters and service providers worldwide for whom we have delivered end-to-end OTT video services. Our fully hosted and managed platform powers the content management, transcoding, security, analytics, and delivery for live and VOD content services to IP connected end points.

Even in these early days since our CES 2014 announcement of Videoscape Cloud Services, our SaaS offerings are helping our customers achieve gains in agility, cost optimization, and time to market. Take Bouygues Telecom in France and Brazilian broadcaster TV Globo, who are reducing the costs and time to introduce new products and services. Videoscape Cloud Services recently enabled TV Globo to introduce gamification experiences to their Voice Brazil program that extended viewer engagement beyond the program's broadcast. TV Globo achieved a 70% increase in viewership over the previous year with a peak of 6 million viewers. (Click here to watch a brief video interview.) NBC used Videoscape Cloud Services for VOD transcoding and origination at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, improving CapEx and OpEx. (In this video NBC shares how Videoscape Cloud assisted their 2014 Olympics production.) And with Videoscape Cloud Services we successfully built, tested and transferred a new IPTV service to Hrvatski Telekom in under 50 days, enabling the Croatian subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom to pilot new video features on their IPv6 network.

These early results speak for themselves. Stay tuned for my next blog on this topic, which will dive into our approach and technical differentiation as a SaaS video provider.