Microsoft Cloud Tapped for Olympic Streaming

At NAB, Microsoft announced new media services and guidance intended to enable content providers and customers to realize the power of cloud computing. The new cloud-based Windows Azure Media Services is designed for creating, managing and delivering media to any device by offering a set of first- and third-party media technologies.Microsoft is working with Akamai and deltatre to deliver HD streaming video of the London 2012 Olympic Games across multiple countries through major rights holders in Europe, North America, Central America and South America. Microsoft says this will be the first time an event of this scale will be hosted and broadcast from a cloud platform to millions of viewers around the globe.Microsoft also published a new Broadcast Reference Architecture intended to offer prescriptive guidance on how media companies can architect their solutions to improve systems performance management as they move toward the cloud. A white paper is available at www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/telecom/docs/BroadcastReferenceArchitecture.pdf.