IIS7 Smooth Streaming Announced in Partnership with Akamai

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

I am excited to announce an innovative new IIS7 feature called “IIS Smooth Streaming”, which will be available as a free IIS7 extension when released, with a public beta planned for early next year. Read John’s post (IIS Media PM) about Smooth Streaming and feature/benefits you can expect to see. As part of the announcement, we’re pleased to have Smooth Streaming available first through the world’s biggest content delivery network provider – Akamai. Having a world-class partner like Akamai is a huge boost for this feature and ensures it will meet the demands of all customers big and small upon final release. Akamai put up a demo site of Smooth Streaming in action, check it out at http://smoothHD.com and tell us what you think!

Back in April of last year I announced that the IIS team had taken over the charter of the Windows Media Server team, and would be working to build a world-class, fully integrated Web and Media server. This past year we’ve delivered a few IIS modules to enable more efficient media delivery with IIS, including the IIS7 Bitrate Throttling Module and the IIS7 Media Playlists. IIS Smooth Streaming is just the start of many new intelligent streaming media features to come which will catapult IIS7 to be a major player in delivering streaming media content on the Web.

It has been fun to watch IIS grow up over the years, and especially great to see big CDNs like Akamai so excited to deploy IIS7 again. It is a testament to the power and flexibility of the IIS7 platform that many of us spent the past five years building. It is also terrific to see the new IIS Media team stepping up and delivering innovative, new media capabilities to the market. Many thanks to all those involved in working toward this announcement.

In case you’re interested in reading some of the news on this feature, see links below:

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-28-2008/0004912585&EDATE

Microsoft is introducing new Web server technology, called Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS7.0) Smooth Streaming, that gives consumers instant start-up times and no buffering by adapting the quality of the video stream in real time based upon changing connectivity speed. This enables companies to boost brand awareness and advertising revenues by extending average viewing times. They can also benefit from unprecedented network scalability using distributed HTTP-based Web servers.

"Smooth Streaming is an evolution of proven Silverlight technology that has powered global online events," said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Division at Microsoft. "Our objective has always been to provide a platform that enables next-generation media experiences on the Web. Together with Akamai, we will take that a step further by offering a consistently superior adaptive streaming experience on a global scale."

http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=10791

In 2006, when the Microsoft Windows Media Services (WMS) charter was picked up by the Internet Information Services (IIS) group, the concept of large-scale HD streaming was still a ways in the future. Today, at the Digital Hollywood show, though, Akamai announced it would be one of Microsoft’s first customers for a new IIS 7.0 Web server technology named Smooth Streaming.

"We've seen firsthand the growing demand for HD online content among our customer base," said Tim Napoleon, chief strategist, digital media at Akamai, as part of the company’s press release announcing its use of the IIS technology for adaptive streaming of HD content

Akamai and Microsoft Attempt to Stream HD Smoothly

http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=10791

Microsoft, Akamai team up on high-def video streams

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10076949-93.html

Microsoft, Akamai Partner on “Smooth HD” Video; Alternative to Brightcove

http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2008/10/28/microsoft-akamai-partner-on-smooth-hd-video-alternative-to-brightcove/

Akamai, Microsoft Team on Adaptive Streaming Service

http://www.xchangemag.com/hotnews/akamai-microsoft-adaptive-streaming-service.html

Akamai and Microsoft work to improve online video

http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2008/10/akamai_and_micr.html

Microsoft, Akamai team up for “no buffer” video streaming

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/102808-microsoft-akamai-video.html