PRESS RELEASE

3M Littmann Stethoscopes Supported by Cisco HealthPresence System

3M and Cisco Expand the Existing Array of Devices that Have Been Tested to Function with Cisco HealthPresence

SAN JOSE, Calif. and St. Paul, MN – September 13, 2012 — Cisco, a world leader in developing and supplying communications products, equipment and solutions, and 3M, a diversified technology company, announced today that the 3M™ Littmann® Electronic Stethoscope Model 3200 has been tested for use with the Cisco HealthPresence® system.

3M and Cisco, working together, expands the existing array of devices that have been tested to function with Cisco HealthPresence thus providing an improvement in the remote delivery of healthcare, globally. Cisco HealthPresence care-at-a-distance solution represents significant advances in technology and telecommunication techniques, effectively delivering remote health care 24/7 by integrating high-definition video, third-party medical devices, collaboration tools and clinical applications.

In turn, Littmann stethoscopes are reputed for their acoustic performance and used by millions of clinicians worldwide. The Littmann Electronic Stethoscope Model 3200 has won numerous industry awards for delivering high quality auscultation sounds at both a local patient site and a remote consulting physician site. Integration of Littmann electronic stethoscopes with the Cisco HealthPresence system will provide the remote consulting physician the ability to listen to the same heart and lung sounds that he/she would hear if conducting an in-person examination, demonstrating a significant leap in remote health care capabilities.

"We are excited by the collaboration with 3M, a company renowned for its high quality stethoscopes, and Cisco, a global leader in networking," said Vishal Gupta, vice president and general manager, Global Healthcare Solutions, Cisco. "We believe this collaboration will accelerate adoption of Cisco HealthPresence and create more choices for health care providers."

With this partnered offering, doctors no longer need to visit a dedicated telemedicine room to connect with patients; they can now consult with patients using high-quality devices such as Littmann stethoscopes on a laptop supported by Internet connection on the HealthPresence platform. Remote "clinical examination" is now possible in a seamless manner with the option of integrating with existing clinical applications.

"Cisco is a leader in telemedicine with a global network, said Bob Kody, 3M Littman global business director. "We are excited to integrate Littmann stethoscopes with the Cisco HealthPresence system, which provides consulting physicians a convenient way to care for patients, and now the ability to access heart and lung sounds."

Currently, 3M™ Littmann® Stethoscopes are being deployed with two lead customers of the Cisco HealthPresence solution and will be available to customers on a broader basis later this year.

About 3M

3M captures the spark of new ideas and transforms them into thousands of ingenious products. Its culture of creative collaboration inspires a never-ending stream of powerful technologies that make life better. 3M is the innovation company that never stops inventing. With $30 billion in sales, 3M employs 84,000 people worldwide and has operations in more than 65 countries. For more information, visit www.3M.com or follow @3MNews on Twitter.

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

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PRESS RELEASE

European Broadcasting Union Successfully Executes on Streaming Strategy for Major Sports Events with Cisco Videoscape Media Processor

Cisco technology supports international media organization at London 2012 Olympic Games

IBC, Amsterdam, Netherlands: 7 September 2012 – Cisco today announced that Eurovision – the European Broadcasting Union’s (EBU) business, operations and network arm – deployed Cisco's Media Processor,  part of the Cisco Videoscape™ TV services delivery platform, to bring European viewers thousands of hours of live streamed coverage from the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Cisco® technology formed an integral part of the EBU's live streaming platform, www.eurovisionsports.tv. During the Games, more than 3,000 hours of EBU members' programming from live HD feeds were encoded in multiple bit rates for adaptive streaming on the site.

To support the growing demand for video streaming during the London 2012 Games, Eurovision deployed Cisco's Media Processor, a cornerstone of the Acquisition Suite, and an important part of the Videoscape™ platform.

The Cisco Media Processor family offers multiple streaming options from single- to multi-format, standard definition (SD) to high definition (HD), and streaming to any device; from set-top boxes, IP connected TVs, tablets, smartphones and PCs. It supports streaming to the latest platforms, including iPhone, iPad, feature phones, smartphones, Microsoft Smooth, and Adobe Dynamic streaming.

Cisco's technology enables EBU to quickly adapt the profiles to its broadcasters’ requests and can automatically optimize the resolution, bit rate and metadata of video streams for the user's specific device characteristics and network conditions, helping to ensure a premium video experience over any IP network and on any device.

EBU Network Director Graham Warren said:

"Events such as the Olympic Games generate huge demand from consumers wanting to follow the action live, using whatever device is most convenient. This can represent a significant technological challenge as our systems need to adapt content to each endpoint and IP network to deliver a seamless, high-quality, live service. We have been very satisfied with Cisco's technology and look forward to developing our streaming services further."

Edwin Paalvast, senior vice president, Service Provider Group, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia, Cisco, commented:

"Demand for online video is growing incredibly quickly, with the latest Cisco Visual Networking Index predicting that video will make up as much as 54 per cent of all consumer Internet traffic by 2016. This growth, combined with the sheer variety of devices that will be used to consume video content, will mean that intelligent, adaptable technology platforms will become increasingly vital for the broadcast industry if it is to deliver a high-quality live experience. We look forward to continuing to work with the EBU and to build on the success of our initial deployment in the future."

Supporting Resources:

• Cisco Service Provider:http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns341/networking_solutions_service_provider_home.html
• Cisco Videoscape
• http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns1043/networking_solutions_market_segment_solution.html
• Cisco Media Processor: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/video/ps11488/ps11791/ps11806/overview.html
• Cisco Visual Networking Index:http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns827/networking_solutions_sub_solution.html#~overview,
• EBU London 2012 Games Coverage:
  http://www3.ebu.ch/cms/en/sites/ebu/contents/frontpage-news/news-2012/european-public-service-broadcas.html

Tags/Keywords:

Cisco, Service Provider, video, VOD, IPTV, ABR, Videoscape, Media Processor, EBU, Eurovision, broadcast, tablet, smartphone, live streaming, multiscreen

RSS Feed for Cisco: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/rss.html

About the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)

The EBU serves 74 Members in 56 countries in and around Europe. Services to Members range from legal advice, technical standardization and development to coproduction and exchange of quality European content. The Eurovision and Euroradio networks deliver news, sports, events and music to EBU Members and other media organizations.

For more information about the EBU: www.ebu.ch and www.eurovision.com

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com. Cisco equipment in Europe is provided by Cisco Systems International B.V. and Cisco International Limited, wholly owned subsidiaries of Cisco Systems, Inc.

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PRESS RELEASE

Cisco and EMC Take 'Three Paths to the Cloud' Strategy to the Next Level

New Joint Reference Architectures, Aligned Channel Incentives and Integrated Customer Support Accelerate VSPEX Momentum
New Offerings Support VCE Vblock in Delivering Customers Unmatched Cloud Infrastructure Choice and Flexibility

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — VMworld — August 28, 2012 — Cisco and EMC today announced further collaboration to help accelerate IT transformation by providing customers with unrivaled choice and flexibility via "three paths to the cloud" — custom-design infrastructure, validated reference architectures, and pre-integrated converged infrastructure.  Cisco and EMC introduced new joint reference architectures, aligned channel partner incentives, and integrated customer support to speed customers' path to the cloud.

Building on a decade-long partnership, Cisco and EMC now provide enterprise and service provider customers with an unmatched menu of options to build cloud infrastructure.  The "three paths to the cloud" include:

• Implement a custom-designed infrastructure with best-of-breed products
• Install validated, easy-to-deploy reference architectures with Cisco solutions for EMC VSPEX™ Proven Infrastructure
• Purchase a pre-integrated converged infrastructure with VCE™ Vblock™ System.

Partnership Highlights:

• The two new Cisco® Validated Designs (CVD) for EMC VSPEX are unified computing reference architectures tailored to SMB and mid-market customers.  Designed to accelerate the journey to the private cloud, the CVDs are Cisco Solutions for EMC VSPEX for Microsoft Hyper-V Architectures and Cisco Solutions for EMC VSPEX for VMware vSphere 5.0 Architectures.
• More than 200 Cisco and EMC Velocity™ channel partners within the global VSPEX community have been trained to resell and deploy EMC VSPEX with Cisco Unified Data Center.
• Cisco and EMC have also aligned their channel incentive structures to simplify the process of accruing incentives and boost partner profitability.
• Cisco and EMC have implemented a customer support framework for VSPEX for collaborative case management.
• VCE — Cisco and EMC's joint venture with VMware — pioneered a groundbreaking integrated data center offering with end-to-end vendor visibility, enabling the leading time-to-market and one of the lowest TCO for converged cloud infrastructure.
• VCE's fully productized converged infrastructure standardizes processes and life cycle management to significantly improve application availability and enable VCE's unique seamless support experience. 
• VCE continues to gain traction in enterprise data centers as well as in cloud service providers with hundreds of VCE Vblock Systems in production at mission-critical data centers worldwide.
• VCE demand continues its strong growth in the most recent fiscal quarter and remains on track to reach a $1 billion revenue run rate.

Customer Quote:

Rajinder Gill, Group Finance Director, Minor, Weir & Willis Ltd

"Our business needed a complete network and infrastructure upgrade in order to implement a new ERP system. VSPEX was an obvious fit for our environment and working closely with Synapse, we reduced our deployment and integration time. The prior validation work performed by Cisco, EMC and Synapse on VSPEX reduced our risk and complexity. Because of the tight integration between EMC, Cisco and VSPEX, we have decided to leverage the VSPEX platform as the primary core of our network and infrastructure for all current and future applications."

Indu Kodukula, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, SunGard Availability Service

"We want to devote our IT resources to developing new innovative automation tools for high-availability services, not building out infrastructure. The pre-integrated Vblock System architecture relieves our staff from having to make different vendors and solutions work together."

Channel Partner Quote:

Joe Coxon, Business Development Manager, Synapse

"Many of the customers we work with want to deploy a cloud, but aren't quite sure how to do so quickly and easily.  VSPEX is a powerful solution that helps us deploy clouds for our customers quickly and efficiently.  By leveraging our expert understanding of client requirements, and Cisco's and EMC's industry-leading technologies, we can deliver a complete solution that matches our customers' business needs."

Dave Hart, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Presidio

"We deliver the ultimate in choice and flexibility to our customers by offering solutions based on EMC and Cisco technologies.  We're seeing a lot of demand for Vblock Systems with larger enterprise and service provider customers and VSPEX configurations allow us to reach a broader market.  Both enable us to provide our unique expertise and differentiated value to help customers meet their business requirements."

Cisco Quote: 

Rick Snyder, Vice President, Global and Strategic Partners, Cisco

"Cisco and EMC partner every day in the engineering labs and in the field, helping customers around the world transform their data centers and strengthen their business.  Through VCE we've unleashed market-moving innovation through the pre-engineered, pre-integrated Vblock Systems.  Now, we're working together to meeting customer demand with Cisco Validated Designs for EMC VSPEX and aligned channel incentives to accelerate VSPEX adoption."  

EMC Quote: 

Josh Kahn, Vice President, Solutions Marketing, EMC Corporation

"VCE enables customers to standardize on a converged infrastructure solution, dramatically accelerating their journey to the cloud. We are very pleased with VCE's momentum and the benefits it is delivering to customers around the world. Building upon this, we are very excited to accelerate our partnership with Cisco on VSPEX to address market requirements for best-of-breed reference architectures offered exclusively via the channel. Channel partners are seeking solutions that reduce complexity and simplify the deployment for their customers."

Additional Resources

Related Links

• Cisco Solution for EMC VSPEX for Microsoft Hyper-V Architectures
• Cisco Solution for EMC VSPEX for VMware vSphere 5.0 Architectures
• Learn more about EMC VSPEX
• Learn more about Vblock Systems

Follow Us Online

• Connect with Cisco via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn.
• Join the Cisco Worldwide Channels conversation on Twitter, Facebook, and Cisco Channels Blog
• Join the #EMCChannel and #VSPEX conversations on Twitter.
• Connect with EMC via Connect with EMC via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and ECN
• Follow VCE on Twitter

About Cisco

Cisco, (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go tohttp://newsroom.cisco.com.

About EMC

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world's leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and create value from their information. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.emc.com.

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PRESS RELEASE

New Survey: Likely U.S. Voters Strongly Back Open Video Calling, Want Technologies to Work Together for Job Creation, Social Benefits and Key Services

77 Percent of Likely Voters Believe Video Calling Should be as Easy as Making a Phone Call

Washington, D.C.  –  August 28, 2012 – Nearly four in five likely U.S. voters believe it is important for technologies such as video calling to work together to help create jobs, promote innovation and deliver critical benefits in remote health care, education, business and other services, according to a newly-released survey. In fact, at least two-thirds of Democrats and Republicans alike believe that more jobs will result from open video calling – for instance, dialing a certain number to reach someone on any video system – than if consumers and businesses are forced to  rely on closed systems that can only talk to one another.

In a survey of more than 1,000 likely U.S. voters conducted on behalf of Cisco by Purple Insights, a division of Purple Strategies, 89 percent felt that the ability of two devices or programs made by different companies to communicate with one another – known as interoperability -- was personally important to them, with almost half indicating such communication is extremely important to their use of devices at home or at work. Of respondents, 77 percent want video calling to be as easy as making a phone call is today.

The use of video by consumers, government and business is growing at a staggering rate.  According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index, in just three years, one million video minutes (the equivalent of 674 days) will traverse the Internet every second.  Use of video calling services is also increasing.  For instance, on February 27th of this year,Skype reported that 34 million people were using the service at one time. 

As video collaboration becomes increasingly mainstream, multiple vendors will have to work together to enable global scale and broad customer choice like consumers have today with phone, Internet and email. Currently, not all video calling technologies work together.  Cisco's TelePresence® and many other video communications products connect using the same standards-based "language." Unfortunately, one of the most popular consumer video calling services, Microsoft's Skype, relies on proprietary standards, which hinders Skype's more than 600 million users from calling non-Skype users, and prevents businesses from reaching them via systems that offer services such as health care and job training by remote video. 

Cisco is a strong advocate of video communications using underlying technologies based on open standards agreed upon by credible standards bodies open to all interested industry participants, a framework that has been used successfully to create the standards that underlie the Internet, email and voice calling. With this approach, anyone who adopts an open standard is assured of basic interoperability that is not controlled by any single commercial vendor. 

Key Highlights of Survey

• 87 percent of respondents want companies to agree to a common standard for video calling so that programs will work together
• 77 percent believe that video calling should be as easy as making a phone call
• Two-thirds, regardless of party affiliation,believe more jobs and innovation will be created with open and interoperable video
• 83 percent (67 percent strongly) want Skype to be interoperable with other video technologies
• 63 percent agree that innovation is how companies grow, how new companies start and how prices are kept down. If one company, such as Skype, controls a majority of the video calling market and does not make its product interoperable, respondents believe that will cut off innovation, slowing the growth of technology jobs and increasing prices.
• Purple Insights, a division of Purple Strategies, conducted 1008 telephone interviews nationwide of likely voters in the 2012 general election for president from August 8 – 15, 2012.  755 interviews were conducted with respondents via landlines; 253 interviews were conducted with respondents on their cell phones. Margin of error for this study is +/- 3.1%

Supporting Quotes

Marthin De Beer, Senior Vice President, Cisco Video & Collaboration Group

"Video is the most engaging medium and its use in every aspect of our lives is growing exponentially. Consumers and business users alike today are demanding that video communications solutions work together and that making a video call be as seamless and easy as making a phone call.  This is about freedom of choice, and we the technology industry must rally around open standards, as we did so effectively with telephone service, the Internet and email. Only with a truly open video community will we fully reap the economic and social benefits of this transformational technology."

Purple Strategies partners, Alex Castellanos and Steve McMahon, jointly noted:

"As a Republican and as a Democrat, we each believe – and it is clear from Purple's data – that all ends of the political spectrum want to be able to communicate as freely as possible. Whether they use video at home or at work, they understand that's where the world is headed and they don't want to be scheduled for a video-to-video job interview and have everything go wrong. We think it's clear to people that video communication is or will soon be a ‘must have,' not a ‘nice to have'. "

Supporting Resources:  

• Watch a video on why interoperability is important
• Share your support for an open video community
• Learn more about Cisco's vision for open standards in video
• Read a blog on standards-based interoperability
• View an infographic on business leaders' thoughts on in-person / video meetings

Tags / Keywords:

Cisco, video, video calling, interoperability, industry standards, TelePresence, Skype

RSS Feed for Cisco:  http://newsroom.cisco.com/rss-feeds

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go tohttp://newsroom.cisco.com.

# # #

Cisco Hosts First Cable Summit In India: Expands Video Set-top Box Portfolio

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Cisco Hosts First Cable Summit In India: Expands Video Set-top Box Portfolio

Press Release : March 26, 2012

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HP Eases Unified Communications Deployment for Enterprises

Topics:Strategic Focus: Connectivity, Converged Infrastructure

ORLANDO, Fla. -- HP today announced two new offerings that facilitate the rapid adoption of unified communications (UC) solutions, helping clients more quickly realize enhanced productivity and improved responsiveness to customers through UC.

The new offerings include HP AppSystem for Microsoft® Lync, a turnkey platform designed to expedite UC deployments, and a customizable HP and Polycom® Rich Media Communications (RMC) solution for greater visual collaboration.

To meet the growing demand for immediate, reliable access to resources and information, HP recognizes that organizations need unified mobile and virtual workplace solutions that enable employees to efficiently communicate.

To help organizations quickly embrace UC, HP is enabling clients to quickly and cost-effectively deploy Polycom RealPresence® video solutions and Microsoft Lync, a UC solution that offers audio, video, web and instant messaging capabilities.  

Simplifying UC integration for faster results
HP AppSystem for Microsoft Lync is an integrated UC platform built on HP Converged Infrastructure. The solution is preconfigured for rapid deployment of Microsoft Lync, allowing clients to quickly realize greater collaboration between employees, partners and customers. The offering also includes assessment, deployment and support services to help ensure the platform is quickly up and running.

This integrated, scalable solution is designed to reduce implementation time and costs by offering extensive testing that ensures multivendor interoperability. Combined with HP services expertise, HP AppSystem for Microsoft Lync enables clients to achieve faster time to value, as well as:

• Achieve enhanced collaboration with the Polycom RealPresence video solutions and Polycom RealPresence Collaboration Server to provide presence-based virtual meeting rooms.
• Reduce costs with comprehensive public switched telephone network connectivity options, eliminating the need for costly rate interfaces. Options include state-of-the-art SIP Trunks from solutions provider ACME Packet, which allow external communication via IP, as well as an Audiocodes Mediant gateway that offers time-division multiplexing connectivity with a client's existing legacy infrastructure.

Top-line support streamlines UC adoption
To help clients rapidly respond to changing market demands and improve the user experience, HP offers a portfolio of support and consulting services.  These services help enable clients to rapidly deploy UC solutions, as well as optimize and secure their network. HP expertise aligns IT with business or government goals to create a clear transformation path for clients while ensuring pervasive user adoption through comprehensive training.

“Unified communications is an attractive option to help increase collaboration and productivity, but not all companies have the IT support to manage deployment and integration with their present IT environments,” said Giovanni Mezgec, general manager, Lync, Microsoft Corp. “HP’s solution helps to support these organizations.”

Amplifying existing UC solutions with video collaboration
The HP and Polycom RMC solution combines HP Networking products based on the HP FlexNetwork architecture with Polycom RealPresence video solutions built on the Polycom RealPresence Platform, which provides comprehensive software infrastructure for universal video collaboration. Clients can easily prepare and install network video capabilities from desktop to conference room and immersive suites.

HP and Polycom RMC is an open standards based, interoperable and extensible offering that enables easy integration into an organization’s existing multivendor environment. In addition, it has built-in multilayer security to protect users’ video streams and applications.  

“Like any corporate, international organization, we can become more efficient in terms of time and travel costs if we use videoconferencing and improve communication technology,” said Steve Grive, director, Information Communications Technology, University of the West of England. “HP consultants are helping us to achieve that.”

Availability

• HP AppSystem for Microsoft Lync will be available in select countries in May.
• The HP and Polycom Rich Media Communications solution is available worldwide through HP Technology Services and HP and Polycom channel partners.
• HP integration, deployment and support services are available globally.

HP’s premier client event, HP Discover, takes place June 4-7 in Las Vegas. 

About HPHP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world’s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.