The idea was to develop and market products to digital media content owners.

In February last year, the companybought a start-up called Five Across, which developed social networking software.

Cisco has used Five Across' technology as the foundation of Eos.

“The reality is that media is so disrupted by digital technology,” he said.

Eos is centred around community and allows fans to participate."

Scheinman believes thatsocial networking is the most important wayfor marketers and big media companies to reach consumers.

Consumers are using sites such as YouTube and Facebook to share media, like videos, music and pictures.

“In many ways digital destroys the value proposition for media,” Scheinman said.

“Eos offers the answer to this,” he explained.

Eos won’t stop piracy entirely.

Warner Music Group is the first major media company to sign up for Cisco’s Eos service.

The company is using the software platform initially to create websites for two artists,Laura IziborandSean Paul.

“We have tried just about everything out there,” he said.

For the past year, the companies have been working closely to fine tune the Eos tools and service.

Nash admitted that Warner Music could have partnered with several other companies to build interactive, community-based websites.

“We’re a music company,” he said.

“We don’t have the resources to make big technology investments and maintain those investments over time.

But Cisco is a fantastic partner that has the money to invest in innovation and world class capabilities.”

And besides its acquisition of WebEx it has little experience offering a managed service of any kind to customers.

People viewing videos from YouTube or listening to a friend’s favourite song on Facebook consume more bandwidth.

And when consumers use more bandwidth, Cisco sells more infrastructure equipment.

Scheinman described the situation as a win-win for everyone involved.

“Fans get a more interactive experience.

We also get the infrastructure benefit.

And even service providers benefit because people are consuming more bandwidth.”