Web 2.0: Cisco's Dan Scheinman Unveils EOS, Entertainment Operating System
Moving on, next at the Web 2.0 conference, Cisco's (CSCO) Dan Scheinman, to talk about the networking giant's strategy in social networking. (They have acquired Tribe and various other things.)
Context & Ripple Effects
Cisco's move into consumer-facing software has been building since at least March 2007, when the company's string of social networking acquisitions — Tribe among them — drew a skeptical read from GigaOM, which argued Cisco had picked the wrong bet on social networks. The same month, the New York Times framed the broader shift toward social networking's next phase as platforms opened beyond standalone destinations.
Dan Scheinman's Web 2.0 unveiling of EOS, an Entertainment Operating System, is Cisco's answer to both: rather than running its own destination site, it is packaging the acquired assets into an operating system for media and entertainment companies to build social experiences on top of Cisco's network.
First-order effects
- Entertainment and media companies become Cisco's direct customers for community software, letting the networking giant sell a platform layer rather than just routers and switches.
- The Tribe acquisition and other social networking purchases shift from standalone bets into components of a single product pitch under the EOS banner.
Second-order effects
- Platform vendors already selling white-label social software to media companies gain a competitor with Cisco's distribution reach into carrier and enterprise networks.
- Cisco's coopetition posture with Microsoft — publicly aired by Chambers and Ballmer in their August 2007 joint appearances — gets a new test, since EOS pushes Cisco further into software territory adjacent to Microsoft's media and collaboration franchises.
Third-order effects
- If EOS gains traction, it points toward infrastructure vendors moving up the stack: owning the network becomes the wedge for owning the software layer that runs on it, echoing the same logic behind Cisco's Telepresence push into high-end videoconferencing.
- A sustained failure would reinforce the GigaOM line of criticism — that hardware-centric acquirers struggle to convert consumer web assets into products — shaping how investors judge similar moves by other networking companies.
The trend: Networking infrastructure vendors are layering software and media platforms on top of their pipes, turning acquisitions of consumer web assets into enterprise-grade product lines.