Microsoft has announced that in hopes of enhancing live video streaming in Microsoft Teams, the company has acquired Peer5. Peer5 is currently developing a platform to improve bandwidth usage through the mesh networking technology. More details of the deal are not disclosed.
It has been of notice that more companies are depending on video streaming to interact with the workforce and control the new modes of work. Broadcasts are being increasingly used for training and meetings. Since live streaming is becoming common, more companies are turning to enterprise video streaming solutions. Global Market Insights has predicted a 19% percent increase in the videoconferencing market between 2020 and 2026. It has to be noted that Zoom alone hosts 45 billion minutes of webinars in a year.
Peer5 which is based in California brings out streaming solutions focusing on technology. It was founded in 2012 and is now one of the world’s largest peer-to-peer content delivery networks. It offers what is called an enterprise content delivery network (eCDN). This can manage the traffic in corporate networks and offer enhanced video streaming and broadcasting for a large audience. It has a WebRTC-based eCDN framework that optimizes bandwidth usage. It can be put into function without having to install it on endpoint devices and without any changes to the current infrastructure.
Teams GM Nicole Herskowitz wrote in a blog post “As Microsoft Teams has become the primary communications and collaboration platform for many of our customers, they’ve asked us for more integrated … solutions for large-scale meetings and virtual events, Peer5 … expand[s] our ability for delivering secure, high-quality, large-scale live video streaming with optimized network performance in Teams.”
Before the acquisition, Peer5 had raised $3.5 million in venture capital from FG Angels and other investors. Peer5’s Hadar Weiss said in a statement “When many employees stream at the same time, the network gets congested. Our technology solves this problem in the most efficient way possible, without changing the existing network infrastructure”. It will be integrated with the video player and will be given additional logic and mechanisms to adapt to any device without the customer doing much for it, he added.
The acquisition happened at a crucial time when Microsoft’s videoconferencing service reached almost 145 million daily active users. The company had recently introduced more features to the Teams platform like Fluid components. It will also be integrated into Windows 11 soon.
