4-page Case Study - Posted 2/3/2007
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Ensuring Reliable, High-Quality Streaming Audio and Video to Organizations Worldwide
Situation
As more and more individuals and businesses connect to the Internet using high speed broadband connections, the content delivery world is poised for a new revolution: the widespread use of high quality video delivered over the internet.
High quality video—not the grainy, lurching images familiar to users with a dialup connection—is appearing on more and more websites. An increasing number of companies are using the Internet to deliver high quality training videos to remote offices, where employees can watch the video when it is most convenient for them. An increasing number of organizations are looking at the delivery of television content over Internet protocol-based networks (IPTV).
At the center of much of this activity is VitalStream, one of the leading content delivery network service providers. Based in Irvine, California, VitalStream offers a network and product suite designed for delivering streamed content on behalf of customers around the world. If a business wants to incorporate streaming media into its infrastructure—whether for training, promotion, or any other purpose—VitalStream can enable the delivery of streamed content far more reliably and cost-effectively than most businesses could on their own. VitalStream’s worldwide network puts local copies of streaming media close to the places where the content is needed, and its powerful service delivery infrastructure delivers that content quickly and reliably. The company’s service console enables organizations to upload and mange content quickly, informs customers of traffic patterns and hits, and allows customers to judge just how successful a video program has been.
VitalStream’s services have been a clear hit, supporting global media companies such as Disney, Time Warner, and Comcast, as well as niche content vendors such as CNET and Edmunds.com. Microsoft routinely uses VitalStream to stream content to users around the world.
To succeed in this challenging service delivery environment, VitalStream had to make the right technological decisions early on. Not only did those decisions involve hardware and software for capturing, encoding, and delivering streaming content, but also how that hardware and software could be cost-effectively licensed. VitalStream officials also knew that whatever decisions they made would have both short-term and long-term financial consequences among investors—for choosing a service delivery architecture that would slow the rollout of new, revenue-producing services would discourage investors from supporting the company down the road. With an environment that could enable VitalStream to roll out cost-effective and highly reliable services quickly, VitalStream officials felt that they could reasonably hope for the enthusiastic support of the investment community.
Solution
VitalStream officials believed that the company could best meet its needs through use of the Microsoft® Windows Server System™, the Microsoft Windows Media Services® 9 Series, and the Microsoft Service Provider Licensing (SPLA) program. During the past five years, VitalStream had deployed thousands of Dell PowerEdge server systems to the perimeter of its global service delivery network. From there, these servers stream content to millions of users around the world. The majority of these systems run the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system and Windows Media Services.
Additionally, VitalStream has developed its core customer care, reporting, billing and video workflow delivery applications using the C# language and the Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET development system. These are Microsoft.NET–connected applications that take advantage of Active Directory®, the directory services capabilities in the Windows Server 2003, as well as Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005 and the Microsoft .NET Framework, an integral component of the Microsoft Windows operating system that provides a programming model and runtime for Web services, Web applications, and smart client applications.
VitalStream supports application development and network management with a team of 14 IT professionals.
“We have developed a global content delivery network focused around streaming,” says Philip N. Kaplan, President and Chief Operating Office of VitalStream. “It has achieved tier one status with Microsoft, and there are only a few companies in the world that have a network of that stature because it requires massive capacity and throughput.”
“Our customers view the Internet as an important distribution channel for both mainstream and niche content,” Kaplan continues, “We have built an infrastructure to support everything from IPTV to online learning to Windows Media podcasting and more. We are a Microsoft shop, and have been a Microsoft shop since inception.”
Benefits
For VitalStream, the benefits of a Microsoft-based service delivery network are both broad and deep. Windows Server 2003 has proven itself to be both robust and reliable, ensuring that VitalStream can maintain a high quality of service where service delivery is critical. Windows Media Services 9 Series has proven to be powerful, easy to use, and very predictable. VitalStream IT personnel know just how Windows Media Services works and just how much performance they can squeeze out of a given server system—and it is a significant amount. The Visual Studio development environment has not only made it easy to develop powerful applications quickly, but VitalStream has found it very easy to hire well-qualified developers with expertise in the required Microsoft technologies. VitalStream is fully aware of the popularity of Linux among other content delivery service providers—and well aware of how difficult and expensive it can be to find well-qualified developers.
The SPLA makes it easy for VitalStream to roll out new services without a significant capital investment for server licenses. VitalStream can commission a new server with all the requisite software and stream only five or 10 pieces of content from it—and even if the server can support thousands of content streams, the SPLA enables VitalStream to pay a recurring monthly fee based entirely on the resources used. So it pays for 10 streams at first and bundles the licensing fees into its monthly charges to its customers. Later, when that same server is handling hundreds of streams for customers, the monthly licensing fees will reflect that increased use. From a cash flow perspective, the SPLA makes it easy to roll out new services quickly and cost-effectively—which is a big win for VitalStream.
Ensuring a High Quality of Service
To delivery consistent, predictable high quality of service, a service provider needs hardware and software that is predictable and reliable—and VitalStream has found that in Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft Windows Media Services. “From a technology standpoint, predictability and scalability are critical,” says Steve Smith, Chief Technical Officer of VitalStream. “When we deploy Microsoft technologies out on our network, we know just what kind of performance we’re going to see. It’s a very predictable platform, and that makes it easy for us to plan. The Windows Media Services 9 Series products are mature and reliable,” Smith goes on to say. “They’re extensible, too, so that we can open them up and add extensions that add value to our customers. We’ve created plug-ins that authenticate or provide conditional access for media, for example, so that the content owner gets to determine who gets to view or access the content. In conjunction with the Windows Media DRM [digital rights management] components of Windows Media Services, that’s very beneficial and very important to many of our customers.”
“The server offerings have gotten better and better over time,” Smith continues. “We can layer on more streaming capacity per node than we can with other products. Windows Server 2003 might not have been the lavish upgrade one could imagine, but from a predictability and reliability perspective it has provided big improvements. That’s directly led to much higher uptime for our services, which is critical.”
That higher uptime not only improves service delivery as perceived by the person interacting with the streamed content; it also improves service delivery as perceived by the person uploading content for distribution as well as the group responsible for managing content delivery. “Windows Media is a very popular offering among our customers,” says Smith, “but they also appreciate the reliability and uptime of the Microsoft platform even when using products they don’t necessarily associate with Microsoft Windows Media itself—in the availability of our reporting tools and our workflow management tools, for example. These are always there for them, and that is appreciated.”
Gaining Easy Access to Qualified IT Personnel
VitalStream has expanded its service delivery network and applications portfolio significantly in the last two years. In 2005 it added several new developers to its IT team—and officials were very pleased with how easy it was to find personnel with exactly the kinds of skills they were seeking. VitalStream does have a number of servers running Linux to support specific customer needs, and the company’s experience building applications using the Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP model (LAMP) has shown that finding well-qualified personnel is more difficult—which can compromise an organization’s ability to meet customer needs.
“By going with the entire .NET technology stack,” says John McIlwain, the VitalStream Director of Product Development, “we’ve been able to tap into a very large base of highly qualified development personnel, quality assurance experts, even documentation developers to help us build the right products. If you know .NET, that says something about you—and you’re likely to be able to fit right into our team quickly.”
As VitalStream grew quickly during 2005, that ability to find well-qualified personnel was critical, too. “Spikes in business demand that you to add staff quickly,” says McIlwain. “It would have been difficult for us to meet our product goals if we had not been able to find people quickly who would fit well within our organization.”
Budgeting with Cost-Effective Licensing Options
The Microsoft Service Provider Licensing (SPLA) program has also played a significant role in easing the rollout and expansion of the VitalStream service delivery network. The SPLA provides VitalStream with the greatest levels of flexibility in terms of how it deploys Microsoft server software and how it prices its services. VitalStream can deploy Windows Server 2003–based servers and service delivery applications without having to wonder whether a customer has enough content or users to justify the full open license fee associated with Microsoft server software. Under the SPLA, VitalStream is not charged the full open license fee. Rather, Microsoft charges a monthly licensing fee based on server use during the month. VitalStream has translated the incremental SPLA licensing costs to the cost per gigabyte of content streamed from its network—and it simply bundles the server software licensing fees into its monthly service charges. As server use rises and falls, so do the licensing fees—yet so do service-based revenues, which ensure that VitalStream can cover its licensing costs easily from cash flow.
The SPLA also provides VitalStream with a significant amount of flexibility to support different customer needs. If VitalStream wants to offer a service to which companies could subscribe on a month-to-month basis, the SPLA provides a licensing model that would support such a service. It is perfect for those business scenarios in which VitalStream might plan to roll out a new service over time or in which VitalStream’s customers expect to either increase the amount of content they want to stream over time or see a significant variation in the volume of streamed content from month to month.
“We did a very careful evaluation of our license options,” says Kaplan. “The SPLA really makes so much sense for us. The rate at which we add and subtract servers on our network is really conducive to a recurrent revenue model where we self-police and self-report our licensing activity. From an economic benefit perspective, it’s clearly more advantageous for us to be able to lock in the license and have guaranteed access to the support and the updates than it would be to buy the license outright and later be subject to unpredictable upgrade cycles.”
“In the last quarter of 2005,” Kaplan continues, “we added more than 1,000 server systems to our network—the majority of which are running Windows Server 2003—we could do that because of the budget predictability month over month and the upgrade predictability from a budgeting perspective. Then there’s the sheer economic present value expense recognition: it just makes more sense for us to use the SPLA than to purchase open licenses.”
Looking Towards the Future
“We're always looking to manage growth,” says Smith. “We need to keep growth at a high enough level to keep Wall Street excited about our company and to be perceived in the marketplace as an innovator. The way we do that is by making the right technology bets.”
“When you look at traditional media companies,” Kaplan adds, “those in the movie, TV and print spaces are just beginning to dip their toes in the online pool. From an advertising revenue perspective, the Internet accounts for only four percent of all advertising dollars. But as eyeballs go online, the advertising dollars will chase the eyeballs. As more and more of that all-important 18 to 34 year-old demographic goes online for their streamed content, we'll see a seismic shift in terms of advertising dollars and audience. With Windows Server, Windows Media Services, and the SPLA we’re building in the solutions that will allow us to participate in what we see as a key secular trend.”
Microsoft Windows Server System and the Communications Sector
Microsoft® Windows Server System™ is a comprehensive, integrated, and interoperable server infrastructure that helps reduce the complexity and costs of building, deploying, connecting, and operating agile business solutions. Windows Server System helps service providers create new value for their businesses and their customers through the strategic use of their IT assets. With the Windows Server™ operating system as its foundation, Windows Server System delivers dependable infrastructure for data management and analysis; enterprise integration; customer, partner, and employee portals; business process automation; communications and collaboration; and core IT operations including security, deployment, and systems management. For more information about Windows Server System, go to:http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem
For more information about Microsoft solutions for the communications sector, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders.
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about VitalStream products and services, call (800) 254-7554 or visit the Web site at: http://www.vitalstream.com
