It’s been a long time in the making and I am happy to announce that today, Microsoft officially announced Silverlight. Silverlight is a a new cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Why am I happy about this? Well for starters, for the past two years I have been complaining to Microsoft that their Windows Media customers feel abandoned. There has been a lack of support for the Windows Media platform for quite some time and Microsoft had ignored the video market for the past few years. Finally, that is now going to change. Customers who use Windows Media and partners who have been building on top of Windows Media are once again going to get the support they need to make the end-user experience better – which is what video on the web is all about – the users experience.

We have a feature story about Silverlight on StreamingMedia.com which gives more details and also covers Adobe’s announcement today of their new media player. (more on that in a later post) Microsoft has kept the development of Silverlight under wraps for quite some time but we’ve been getting the low-down on the platform over the past few weeks so I’ll have a bunch to talk about over the next few days as more details about Silverlight are made public.

This is a big day for the industry. Anytime you have two companies like Microsoft and Adobe both vying for control of the format content creators use for video is a good thing. Competition means we’ll have more products come to the market faster as each company tries to out do one another.   

I know the title of this post is something you hear of every year before NAB kicks off, but this year, there are going to be some announcements that will really change the way consumers interact with video content. We’ve been pre-briefed at StreamingMedia.com on many of these announcements and the editorial staff is currently writing up featured stories on some of these news items. Personally, I am really excited by may of them as it is only going to further highlight in the media and with content owners what is going on with online video and where it will evolve.

We’ll be posting some of the feature stories on the StreamingMedia.com website at 12:01am Sunday night and I will be commenting on the impact of many of these announcements here on the blog next week.

Akamai announced today that they had purchased Red Swoosh in an all stock deal valued at about $15 million. Red Swoosh is a company that has been around for many years and has a client-side application that enables faster downloads and streams. The company never had much traction in the market and only a few customers probably due to the fact that they are a very small organization and I know had limited resources.

I have never personally used their application and had never heard from any companies who have, but my guess here is that Akamai is using this acquisition to get more insight into the P2P market and potentially use the Red Swoosh client for a new Akamai content distribution service at a reduced price. I like the idea if this enables them to reduce their distribution costs since they are priced much higher in the market that their competitors.

While it is too early to know the role that P2P may play in the content distribution landscape, it’s a smart move by Akamai to get a leg up on the other networks by really immersing themselves with P2P distribution now. With what the multiple that their stock price is trading at, the deal is a no-brainer and there is no downside or risk to it for Akamai.

There is very little mentioned in the press release about the deal and what Akamai’s plan are with it, but I will post more details when I get them.

Update: I sent Akamai a list of questions and just got answers back from them. One interesting thing to note in all of this is that last week, Akamai CEO Paul Sagan discussed P2P technology in a lengthy Forbes article about Sagan and the company.

My main question to Akamai was whether they acquired Red Swoosh purely for the technology or to get a better insight into P2P? As expected, Akamai said they made the acquisition mainly to acquire what they feel is a "unique" client-side technology and they also "benefit from from acquiring Red Swoosh’s skilled software developers that have years of advanced expertise in P2P technologies".

As for what Akamai will do with the technology in terms of offering it as a product and how it will fit into their product portfolio, they said they "are not introducing any product offering at this time, nor discussing any particular time frames."

Clearly, like many delivery networks, Akamai wants to keep a close eye on where a P2P offering may fit into their product portfolio and what type of content is best suited for this kind of distribution. The Red Swoosh acquisition simply allows them to do this overnight by getting the developers and technology in-house from a company that while not successful in selling the service, has been in the P2P market for years and instantly gives Akamai a leg up on the competition when it comes to the networks hands-on knowledge of P2P.

If you are attending NAB this year and want to use my blog to publish your thoughts about the happenings at NAB, feel free to contact me. I’m not interested in a re-hash of press releases, but rather your take
or thoughts on anything you may find interesting at NAB or have an
opinion on. It could be about a particular speaker, conference session, new product or service offering or anything else. The blog has a lot of traffic so if you’d like to do some quick posts, under your own name and get exposure, I am open to the idea.

When it comes to the issue of Net neutrality, we’ve got a long way to go before we really know how it is all going to play out. There’s a good article by Catherine Holahan on BusinessWeek.com that gives some details on the inquiry the FCC launched on March 22nd into the practices of broadband providers. It’s a short piece that gives an overview of the topic from a high-level. It’s a good read for someone who needs to understand what is at stake and how to explain to others what is being debated with Net neutrality.

For the dinner event that I am moderating tonight, talking to video in the enterprise and hosted by Ignite Technologies, what questions or topics do you think we should discuss? While I am not creating a huge list of points as I want to keep the topic open and free-flowing, here are the few I am interested in discussing:

• how is the enterprise market learning from what is taking place with video outside of the enterprise industry?
• what are the biggest headaches you face when it comes to implementing the entire ecosystem that makes up enterprise video?
• how much convincing of management is still needed when it comes to
  getting budget to buy and deploy enterprise video products and services
  and what are some of the best ways you prove internally the value that
  video provides?
• how do you evaluate products and services in the market and what factors do you use to decide what solutions you purchase?

Are there any questions that you would add to the list or any topics you’d like me to bring up so that you can hear the attendees take on the subject?

Last month, 24/7 Real Media nicely invited me to a private dinner they held in NYC with about a dozen executives to talk about "Video: The New 3.0" The attendees were from MLB, NBC, NBA, ESPN, Verizon FiOS, WallStrip.com and others.

It was probably one of the most useful and productive gatherings I have been at in a long while. While many industry conferences do a good job of arranging networking events, this dinner allowed us to be in a small setting, with no distractions and enabled us to discuss various web video topics for a few hours.

I liked the setting so much and felt it was so productive, that I am now going to be helping to organize these dinner events on a monthly basis, focused around very specific subjects. The next dinner is being held tonight, hosted by Ignite Technologies, and is talking to video in the enterprise. It has a great group of enterprise executives attending from Bloomberg, Microsoft, Vanguard, Citigroup, Honeywell, Lehman Brothers, Canon and others.

So here is my offer. If you are a vendor that wants to organize or participate in one of these dinners and you want to get together a group of executives to get their take and feedback on the market, I will help you organize it free of charge. I will help devise a topic, moderate the discussion and open up my rolodex and allow you to pick who you want to invite, be it customers, analysts or the media. All the vendor has to do is pick up the cost of the dinner.

These dinners are a great way for vendors to hear directly from customers in the industry and make new introductions from companies they may not normally be able to easily get in front of. They are a great way to hear what is taking place in the market and hear how the market is evolving – from real customers.

So if you want more details or want to discuss further, please contact me. Also, if you want to attend one of these dinners or suggest a topic or vertical to discuss, I’d love to hear from you.