(1 October 2008 6:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Cisco and Adobe Systems have announced that Telecom Italia has chosen the Cisco Content Delivery System with Internet Streaming (CDS-IS ) platform, with Adobe® Flash streaming technology, to deliver live television channels and on-demand content through its Web portal, Yalp! .

With the CDS-IS platform and Adobe Flash technology, Telecom Italia can deliver high-quality, rich streaming media content to its viewers enabling them to watch TV shows on their laptops and PCs, accelerating the fusion of TV and the Internet.

And because the CDS-IS system supports all major streaming and download formats, including the integrated native Adobe Flash Player, Telecom Italia now has the platform foundation to deliver "any stream to any screen" in any format.

More and more, consumers are accessing content across PCs, PDAs, mobile phones and other devices. Through the deployment of the Cisco CDS-IS and the integration of Adobe Flash technology, Telecom Italia subscribers can view interactive video online with a hassle-free, instant-on Web video experience.

Telecom Italia VP network development and Innovation Sandro Dionisi says, "We are constantly striving to improve our customer services and experiences. The Cisco CDS-IS with Adobe Flash technology will provide us with the flexibility and scalability we needed to elevate our services to the next level, enabling us to scale Flash streaming while providing resiliency and high-quality services that our customers expect from us. CDS-IS offers us greater control of our delivery infrastructure so that we can cost-effectively create differentiated services that span across multiple screens."

"Consumers are no longer satisfied with linear programming delivered through the television screen. They want choice and personalised experiences, and they want them on their time across a myriad of devices. The combination of the CDS-IS and Adobe streaming technologies in a single high-performance solution enables service providers to deploy next-generation multimedia services across both traditional as well as converged IP infrastructures."

Adobe GM, VP dynamic media Jim Guerard says, "The combination of the Cisco CDS-IS with the Adobe Flash Media Server 3 expands deployment options and business opportunities for our customers and brings a new level of interactivity and rich experiences to consumers.

"The collaboration between Cisco and Adobe to create an integrated solution provides content distributors with more delivery options and is major step toward the shared vision of delivering content, anywhere, anytime, to any device."

With the Cisco CDS, service providers can offer a variety of services to subscribers now, including streaming intensive Web services, video-on-demand, time-shifted television, video ad insertion, user-generated content and next-generation content delivery network (CDN) services. The Cisco CDS-IS supports all leading Web formats.

The CDS implementation of Adobe Flash Media Server 3 software offers the full benefits of Adobe Flash technology, including improved performance for faster user response and increased streaming protection to help ensure that valuable content is better protected as it is delivered to viewers.

The CDS platform provides additional benefits for the hosting and distribution of streaming video with Adobe Flash technology, including content and service routing, dynamic hierarchical caching, load balancing, failover protection, IP multicast extensions, unified management tools and end-to-end quality-of-service (QoS) support.