Video is the New Audio at Cisco. That’s an audacious statement for a guy who started working in the Bell system about 30 years ago. The New Audio? Audio sets a standard that is pretty hard to beat. Audio telephony has been around for almost 140 years. (The first major phone system was started in 1877.) And in that time it has grown to become globally ubiquitous, because of three things:
- it works, really well, all of the time,
- it’s easy to use, and
- it doesn’t matter what phone you use; you just use whatever is available, because all the systems interconnect.
Good quality video communication hasn’t been around for a century – it’s been around for maybe 20 years. (Although click here for a great picture of a commercial video phone from 1969). As a Cisco IT guy, let me explain why video is the new audio inside Cisco today.
