The streaming-video and content-delivery markets got two significant boosts this week as Web retail giant Amazon (AMZN) and media server software provider Wowza Media Systems both added new tools to make streaming cost-effective and simple for service providers and enterprises.
Amazon’s Web Services unit, said its CloudFront content delivery service now has streaming audio and video capability. Launched in November 2008, CloudFront can deliver content from a network of 14 data centers in the U.S., Europe, and East Asia, providing cloud-based service at much cheaper rates than convention content delivery networks.
Wowza, meanwhile, opened its “unified media server to public use, calling it “the first consolidated media streaming platform able to simultaneously stream to the desktop, mobile devices and IPTV player clients. The Wowza Media Server 2 includes support for Adobe’s Flash player, the iPhone and iPod Touch from Apple (AAPL), and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Silverlight media player.
“Media delivery is about consumers viewing content the way they want to view it,” said David Stubenvoll, Wowza’s CEO, in a statement. “The platforms can’t be locked to proprietary clients, protocols or software residing on devices.”
Amazon’s CloudFront streaming service is tied to Flash and to media that is stored in Amazon’s S3 storage cloud. Such files are enabled for distribution via CloudFront, using the Web-based interface for Amazon Web Services or an API. Streaming media requests are automatically routed to the best available CloudFront edge server to keep bit rates high and latency low.
Wowza’s Media Server, on the other hand, supports multiple streaming protocols and technologies including RTMP, from Adobe, Apple HTTP Stream and QuickTime, and Microsoft Smooth Streaming, as well as IPTV for set-top boxes.
These new developments in streaming media mark a dramatic shift, according to Dan Rayburn, a principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan. “If some still want to argue that delivering video on the Internet is not a commodity,” Rayburn wrote on his blog, BusinessofVideo.com, “Amazon's announcement should make them think again.”
