When Written: April 2012
High performance and scalable live video streaming via the new Azure Media Services
There have been some interesting announcements recently from Microsoft. One is the launch of Azure Media services (http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2012/04/16/announcing-windows-azure-media-services.aspx ) . This will provide a mechanism for streaming live video content via the Cloud. In a previous article in issue 198 I wrote about how easy it is to set up a live media streaming service on a server, but did comment that you would need decent amounts of bandwidth to host this if the desire for your content was anything more than friends and family. Now this limitation has been removed by having a fully scalable solution which can be scaled up and down depending on the demand.
To try out this service, you currently have to email them to request an account and mine has not come through yet. When it does and assuming that initial trials are not limited to USA then I shall be writing about using this in a future article. I mention the service at this early state because if you are thinking of investing in the infrastructure for your video streaming solution it might be a good time to hold fire for a few months to investigate this first of a series of Microsoft Cloud based Paas (Platform as a Service ) solutions.
Article by: Mark Newton
Published in: Mark Newton