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Yahoo!
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A Dramatic Improvement in Scalability and Throughput is Changing the Economics for Content Delivery at Yahoo!
Yahoo!, Inc. has deployed Microsoft® Windows Media® Services 9 Series, a component of Microsoft Windows® Server 2003, to deliver content for its Yahoo! Platinum service. Since moving to the new Microsoft platform, Yahoo! has realized significant improvements in throughput that have more than doubled the number of streams that one server can deliver. Yahoo! is also benefiting from the industrial strength performance of Windows Media Services 9 Series, which has allowed it to accommodate unforeseen spikes in demand-going from zero users to tens of thousands of users in a matter of minutes. The new Microsoft platform is allowing Yahoo! to develop customized solutions that increase the value of its streaming services and present new business opportunities.
Yahoo! Inc. is a leading provider of comprehensive online products and services to consumers and businesses worldwide. Yahoo! is the number one Internet brand globally and the most trafficked Internet destination worldwide. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Yahoo!'s global network includes 25 world properties and is available in 13 languages. Among its many services, Yahoo! offers online video and audio services featuring branded programming from leading entertainment, sports and news providers for both broadband and narrowband consumers.
The company's newest subscription service, Yahoo! Platinum, is a premium online video and audio service that provides video and audio content from CBS' SURVIVOR INSIDER, FOX's "American Idol," NASCAR.com, ABC News, CBS MarketWatch, and The Weather Channel, among other providers. Yahoo! recently provided Platinum subscribers with CBS Sports' coverage of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship through its Internet rights holder SportsLine.com. Yahoo! plans to add programming from CNBC Dow Jones Business Video, National Geographic, Warren Miller Entertainment, and more. With the launch of Yahoo! Platinum, Yahoo! continues to deliver on its strategy to be the most compelling entertainment, sports and news destination on the Web.
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Yahoo! has recently deployed Microsoft® Windows Media® Services 9 Series, a component of Microsoft Windows® Server 2003, to deliver all of the content for its Platinum service. Windows Server 2003 with Windows Media Services 9 Series offers a powerful server infrastructure that is highly scalable, efficient, and
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Customer Profile
Yahoo! is the most trafficked Internet destination in the world. Among its many services, Yahoo! offers online video and audio services featuring branded programming from leading entertainment, sports and news providers for both broadband and narrowband consumers.
Business Situation
Yahoo! Platinum-the company's premier subscription service-offers video and audio content from NASCAR.com, ABC News, the Weather Channel, CBS MarketWatch and other popular content providers.
Solution
Yahoo! has recently adopted Microsoft Windows Media Services 9-a component of Microsoft Windows Server 2003- to deliver all of its Platinum content. To date, Yahoo! has delivered over 225,000 hours of content and 2.85 million streams using Windows Media 9 Series.
Benefits
- Increased server efficiency allows fewer severs to do more work
- Improved end user experience
- Economical strategy to meet future demand and growth
- Enterprise level performance for meeting the most demanding streaming media challenges
- Ability to produce plug-ins and customize the platform to further benefit Yahoo! and its customers
- Ability to extend its services in new directions and explore new revenue sources
- Ability to handle high demand without sacrificing quality
- Backwards compatible with previous encoding formats and also with earlier versions of Windows Media Player
Software and Services
Microsoft® Windows Media® Services Series 9
Microsoft Windows® Server 2003
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fully capable of meeting the demands that Yahoo!'s online audience places on its servers. Because Windows Media Services 9 Series offers improved efficiency that allows Yahoo! to deliver more streams on fewer servers, the company has been able to extend its content offerings while minimizing hardware investments.
Since adopting Windows Media 9 Series, Yahoo! has been successfully delivering some of the Web's most popular, live streaming content. Yahoo! Platinum offered subscribers access to CBS Sport's coverage of the NCAA 1 Men's Basketball Championship, a very popular offering that attracted a great deal of attention and put Yahoo!'s servers to the test. Also, as recent events have unfolded in the Middle East, Yahoo has been offering live coverage of the Pentagon and White House war briefings. This free coverage is offered live to all Yahoo! users, not only to Platinum subscribers. In covering the War briefings, Windows Media Services 9 Series has displayed the impressive scalability and throughput to handle the immediate, drastic increase in load that the war briefings creates-going from zero users to 25,000 users in less than 2 minutes.
Yahoo! is improving the user experience with the Fast Streaming features of Windows Media Services 9 Series that were designed for that specific purpose. For broadband users, exceptional benefits are gained when viewing Yahoo! content with Windows Media Player 9-creating an instant-on/always-on viewing experience. Windows Media Services 9 Series is down-level compatible for users with previous versions of Windows Media Player.
Yahoo! is also taking advantage of the extensibility of Windows Server 2003 to develop plug-ins and other custom features that further enhance the Windows Media 9 Series platform. The company is able to take advantage of the powerful developer tools of Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2003, as well as the functionality provided by the .NET Framework, to add value to the Windows Media 9 Series platform.
Currently, Yahoo! is using 35 servers running Windows Media Services 9 to deliver its Platinum content. To date, Yahoo! has delivered over 225,000 hours of content and 2.85 million streams using Windows Media 9 Series. As the number of subscribers and the amount of available content increases, and as Yahoo! moves other services to the new Microsoft platform, the company estimates that future growth will see the implementation of a total of 250-300 servers running Windows Media Services 9 Series.
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The Windows 2003 operating system builds on Windows 2000 Server's reputation for outstanding performance and scalability, while Windows Media Services 9 Series provides improved streaming efficiency. Yahoo! is taking advantage of the overall performance of Windows Media 9 Series to enhance its streaming media services and to pursue new and growing economic opportunities. Windows Media Services 9 Series is providing Yahoo! with an economical means to meet the demands of some of today's most popular Internet content, as well as the ability to accommodate future growth as broadband technology and streaming media continue to increase in popularity.
Drastically Improved Efficiency
For Yahoo!, server efficiency and scalability are closely linked. The need to add hardware is actually reduced by improving efficiency. Windows Media 9 presents Yahoo! with an economical approach to scaling to meet the ever-increasing demand for streaming content.
Since deploying Windows Media Server 9 Series, initial testing of Yahoo! Platinum performance has proved that with one server Yahoo! is now capable of serving the same number of broadband streams that previously required over 2 servers. "We have seen remarkable throughput improvements," says Justin Madison, Director, Streaming Services, Yahoo! "The software alone provides a 2.5 times improvement in efficiency. This is with the same infrastructure-the same boxes-serving the content."
The growing popularity of broadband connectivity has made delivering content to broadband customers an increasingly important business consideration for Yahoo! In fact, for its Platinum service, the subscribers are made up almost entirely of broadband users. Windows Media Services 9 Series has vastly improved server capacity which helps Yahoo! meet its current demand for broadband content and provides an economical strategy for future growth. "Broadband is incredibly important to us and the ability to cut costs in delivering broadband content is very valuable," says Madison. "We recognize the importance of broadband for the future of our streaming services. The ability to achieve this kind of performance economically with Windows Media Services 9 Series is very valuable as we foresee the demand for broadband streaming services continuing to increase rapidly."
Enterprise-level Performance
In addition to offering an economical strategy to meet current and future demands, Windows Media Services 9 Series is also providing the kind of performance that Yahoo! values. One of the ways that this high level of performance is benefiting Yahoo! involves its coverage of the war briefings.
"An important factor in Yahoo!'s war briefing coverage is ramp-up-the ability to handle huge, immediate, unforeseen demand," says Madison. "The war briefings are not scheduled. For the millions of users who visit the Yahoo! homepage every minute, a link suddenly appears on the homepage when an upcoming briefing is announced. We've had no problems meeting the instant, unscheduled demand for the war briefings. With Windows Media Services 9 Series we have gone from zero connections to as many as 25,000 connections in just two minutes without any problems. This kind of ramp up is impressive and is testimony to the kind of performance that Windows Media 9 Series offers."
Extending the Platform and Exploring New Opportunities
Yahoo! is customizing the platform to meet its own needs-leveraging the extensibility of the platform. Some features, such as Fast Start and Fast Cache are being put to use by Yahoo! not only to improve the user experience but also to explore new, unforeseen economic opportunities.
"Another valuable feature of Windows Media Services 9 Series is the ability to create custom plug-ins that extend the platform," says Madison. "With the ability to create our own custom plug-ins, we can extend the file caching functionality provided by Windows Media Services 9 Series to include our own business logic. We use this to reduce the load to the filer, and reduce the throughput requirement. Ultimately, this will reduce the cost of backend storage through localized file caching."
The Fast Start and Fast Cache features of Windows Media Services 9 Series were intended to provide the end user with an improved experience. Fast Start is a feature that reduces buffering time, while Fast Cache streams content to the user's player as fast as the network will allow. Yahoo! has discovered that these features offer benefits that extend beyond the end user's experience. For instance, Fast Cache is reducing the load placed on Yahoo!'s servers. "Allowing users to cache content locally allows users to replay the content without stressing our system," says Madison. "This is just one way that we are benefiting from Fast Start and Fast Cache."
Yahoo! has discovered that Fast Start and Fast Cache are also very beneficial for online streaming advertising. "A user doesn't want to wait for buffering, especially for an online commercial," says Madison. "In this way, the features of Windows Media Player 9 are opening new economic opportunities for us. We improve the way that online advertisements are delivered, which makes our service more attractive to online advertisers. These features-which Microsoft intended to provide a better user experience-are actually helping us develop new revenue streams and explore new revenue opportunities."
The benefits that Yahoo! is realizing as a result of the move to Windows Media Service 9 Series, have led Yahoo! to consider an entirely new direction with its streaming services. Yahoo! is currently in the process of becoming a Microsoft Windows Media 9 Certified hosting provider and is seriously considering offering its streaming media services on an outsourced basis as an Internet Streaming Hosting Provider.
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© 2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Microsoft, Visual Studio, Windows, and the Windows logo, and Windows Media are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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