GigaOM -- Cisco Place and Time Shifts With Arroyo

The move is yet another part of Cisco's bid to turn itself into a consumer centric company. As you might remember, it has spent over $6 billion and acquired companies like Linksys, KISS Technology and Scientific Atlanta. It has also made investments in consumer video offerings such as Akimbo and Cinema Now.

Arroyo, is the latest and perhaps the most crucial piece of the puzzle. Since Arroyo's products allow carriers - wireless, wireline and cable operators - to deliver video on demand to any platform: television, computer of mobile phone, Cisco now has acquired three must-have features of any future video offering.

All of this makes sense on a lot of levels. Cisco wants to expand beyond their core enterprise and carrier markets, so they turn to the home and media users. Happily, Cisco's going to drive high-end networking gear demand by creating a need on the audience's end. The piece-parts offered through Scientific Atlanta, Linksys, and KISS all address the issue of being able to deliver media, information, and software from the internet and proprietary networks (like cable MSOs) throughout the home. Arroyo's "DVR in the network" gives Cisco's service operator customers another option for delivering the experience, with the advantage that the delivery can be device-independent.

Everyone's looking at Microsoft, Apple, or Sony to try to "own the living room," but that assumes content delivered over IP and over some publicly-accessible network. No cable company wants to be disintermediated in this way, and neither will the telcos (once they roll fiber to the home). Cisco, with it's network infrastructure heritage, is playing the game by serving the existing delivery networks.