Microsoft Stream

[idm]

This is going to be huge. 10 years ago, I would never have thought that technology alone sufficiently differentiated YouTube from "long tail" offerings like Vevo or Twitch. It turns out you can have multiple, multiple-billion-dollar businesses using essentially the same platform. The use cases inherent to various content niches inform new user interfaces and modes of interacting with the underlying video data.

Enterprise Video is a huge content niche. I've used YouTube in the past for business videos, but it was awkward. I wanted greater privacy, which YouTube does not really offer, because these videos discussed pre-launch ideas. We already used Office 365, so Microsoft Stream would have been a no-brainer.

I would love to perform research with the MS Stream platform, too. By focusing on the niche of business, Stream is creating interesting audience dynamics that will be quite different from the "grazing" model of recreational video watching. This is relevant to my interests.

[wastedhours]

"Enterprise Video is a huge content niche." - most definitely, almost this exact same thing is in my ideas notebook (as I'm sure it is for many people), especially with Office 365 integration.

There's going to be a whole ecosystem around more internal video production, webinars and training sessions going forwards. Going to be a really nice niche.

[mankash666]

In other words, the only real advantage Microsoft has is in enterprise channel sales

[ams6110]

Doesn't Adobe Connect already cover this space pretty well? Enterprises have been using that for both live and recorded video and webinars for years.

[cptskippy]

I work on enterprise video for a number of years and the biggest problem isn't a delivery platform, it's infrastructure being ill suited for video.

A lot of enterprises are setup with a Spoke-Hub topology where all network data passes through the hub. Sometimes this is done for auditing purposes, and other times it's for security. Sometimes remote offices do not have internet access despite an internet connection. Their edge routers just use a VPN tunnel or MPLS network back into the hub.

In the end it's no distribution that kills but bandwidth. That why peer-to-peer video and multicasting are still around. Because in a lot of cases you can have one person browsing Youtube or watching a webcast from his desk and it will completely saturate the office data line.

[yairharel]

Good point. Microsoft clearly got the memo. I work for a peer-to-peer video delivery provider (Kollective) and we partner with Microsoft to scale video delivery on enterprise networks.

[Koshkin]

Maybe things aren't as bad as I imagine them to be, but my immediate reaction to this was that now instead of working we are all going to be required to spend time watching "enterprise" videos - as if countless hours being wasted in senseless meetings watching someone's latest PowerPoint creation is not enough. Way to go, coders, way to go...

[robotresearcher]

Ah, corporate training videos. It's what Netlflix in another tab was invented for.

[ZenoArrow]

If anything, this should cut down on time for meetings if used properly. Plus there's no 2x speed button when you're meeting up in meatspace.

[vsood]

This about best practices, knowledge sharing, executive communications!

[DangerousPie]

Was anybody else a bit confused by how the page says "The content you want, and nothing else - Create a secure, encrypted video site with no ads and no unrelated videos to distract people—and no headaches for your IT department." and right next to it they show a screenshot of a page with "Trending Videos" and "Popular Channels"? Isn't that pretty much the opposite of what they should be showing there?

[idm]

I think they are demonstrating discovery within-company. That feature will be huge. It potentially eliminates meetings that would have had to occur "between silos" - which are extremely difficult meetings to begin with.

If somebody from team A (on campus 1) can watch a video from team C (on campus 3) without needing their team leaders to coordinate a meeting, this will be extremely valuable to businesses.

But why would team A ever find out about team C? That's where this discovery feature comes in. See what's trending within-company.

[ceejayoz]

No reason a corporation's internal video repository couldn't have those things, if they're large enough.

[zwieback]

Instead of YouTube-Enterprise it would be nice to have a way to produce better video. I find it hard to sit through poorly produced and horribly narrated videos, some kind of hosted production service that helps make better videos would be really useful. Coach the user to get better lighting, sound and tighter editing.

[s3r3nity]

I agree - but you want to first make a smooth + easy to use platform to encourage the user to stick around for that coaching. Otherwise, I'll just find the whole experience burdensome.

Hopefully your recommendation is on MSFT's roadmap.

[gourneau]

This is great for organizations that are already using office 365. We have been recording lots of presentations, and this is a prefect place to put them.

If there are any Stream folks reading this my one request is an easy way to attach a slide deck to the videos. The video description is an okay place, but it would be even better if there was deeper integration. Like slides on one side of the screen.

[yayadarsh]

Thanks for the feedback! I have added this to our backlog via our feedback forum here: https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Stream-Ideas/Attach-powe...

[metaloha]

Oh man this hurts. I worked with a company several years ago to bring an "enterprise youtube" to market, but it was only ever marketed to pyramid-style corporations as a sales training tool. I believe it's still in use by a few hundred thousand employees, but as far as I know it's still just being artificially restricted to those types of businesses :(

[Roritharr]

This desperately needs the functionality of Slidepresenter[1], then it would be amazing. Without the option to more easily add more information to the videos, put them next to more context, this could fizzle into a dump for low quality "memos".

[1]http://www.slidepresenter.com/en/

[eganist]

Microsoft bought LinkedIn this year, and LinkedIn bought Lynda last year (https://www.lynda.com/press/pressrelease?id=4563), though the Microsoft transaction seems like it's still in flight.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is a simple whitelabeling of Lynda (or perhaps adaptation to a slightly tweaked use case -- this doesn't seem focused specifically on organizational eLearning) since Lynda hasn't been discontinued as a service, but that's just off of my quick 30 second glance. Stream and Lynda look like they both do pretty much the same thing, so Microsoft might be capitalizing on its own brand recognition to sell the underlying service to Microsoft shops.

I'm purely speculating, though. Is there anyone on the Stream team who can comment?

[Delmania]

Lynda provides a place for authors to upload training videos that can be accessed through a subscription. They are then paid royalties every time someone accesses the video. (At least, that's how Pluralsight works).

Stream allows companies to produce their own videos, for HR, training, and motivational purposes, and host it. Think of it as an internal YouTube.

[Gaessaki]

This is pure speculation, but I'm thinking they leveraged Azure Media Services[1] to deliver Stream, perhaps partially as a hero story for Azure. I feel like it's way too quick for them to have built an entire solution based off the Lynda stuff. I'm not even sure the companies are that integrated yet.

[1] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/media-services/

[Guest98123]

It could provide for some interesting integration. For example, you're a company with 20 employees and a Microsoft Stream account that has a handful of training videos produced internally.

Now, let's say you want your junior programmers to be more familiar with MySQL basics. What if you could buy a Lynda MySQL training video from Microsoft, and have it added to your company Stream? Perhaps you add the video to a category on Stream so it can only be viewed by your junior programmers. Then, the license could charge you for each unique junior programmer that watches the video. If you hire a new junior programmer, you add them to that Stream category, they watch the MySQL training video, you get billed.

[LyalinDotCom]

"I wouldn't be surprised if this is a simple whitelabeling of Lynda" I don't work on this team so I have no clue to say anything 100%, but given that the LinkedIn deal has not closed yet I see no way how that can be true.

[vsood]

The main scenarios for Stream today are Corporate communications, Knowledge sharing, Training and IT help desk videos. Lynda is a primarily a content site. Stream is a more of a service for customer's own content. It's built on Azure Media Services and Azure.

[contextfree]

as you say, the LinkedIn acquisition hasn't actually happened yet, so I don't understand how what you're speculating could be possible.

[bnt]

It would be great if they used the Surface Pro 4 on the marketing page, not SP3. The keyboard on the SP4 is lightyears better :)

[Fogest]

I sold my Surface Pro 3 because of the bad keyboard on it :P. Went with an ultrabook instead as I just used it for typing notes anyway.

[contextfree]

you can use an SP4 keyboard with an SP3 (and vice versa I guess)

[maitrik]

Wow we were just looking for something like this that was accessible and easy. Will definitely give this a shot.

Best bet for us till now used to be Vimeo.

[dorianm]

It seems like using unlisted videos with YouTube solves 99% of the use cases.

[dogma1138]

Unlisted videos aren't private, you also have a problem with the YT license.

[marxidad]

Would uses cases that require corporate security account for only 1%?

[sraje]

unlisted videos just means that others can't search for them. If someone gets access to the URL, they can still view the video. Adding video permissions allows the video owners to ensure that people who shouldn't watch your videos can't.

[s3r3nity]

Can you encrypt a Youtube channel? (I actually don't know...) Seems like this addresses a lot of security scenarios that Enterprise cares about.

[thr0waway1239]

For everyone worried about software jobs going away, this is a good example of something which will create new jobs. Soon, some of us will be spending our time investigating why the green YouTubes [1] "is down for some reason" :-)

[1] https://vimeo.com/47311461#t=17m0s

[CuGi]

Although this looks cool, i don't know how well it would last.

I guess my issue is that i don't understand how this would scale.

There is not going to be a massive amount of customers for a specialized enterprise video platform, and there's already video support in Sharepoint?

That would make pricing tricky, since this is essentially a single feature?

[bryanlw]

I heard Stream and O365 Video will converge and Stream will also stand alone pricing too. So you can get Stream through office, or if you don't want to pay office you can pay Stream alone.

[baldfat]

This is absolutly what I have been look for at my company. We are a non-profit educational company and training happens 90% during the start of the year. We need a way to gather ideas and present them to others in our company at our 60+ locations.

[srikz]

I always thought PowerPoint was going to evolve into a hybrid video-presentation platform. Something which would include narration, more fluid and complex transitions / animations along with the ability to jump to specific points in the presentation. Maybe Stream can bring such features to PowerPoint in Office 365

[romanovcode]

What is the use case here?

[Delmania]

Exactly what it says, which is providing a platform for companies to share videos for a variety of purposes. This was a topic of conversation at one of the companies I worked for, which is a large payroll service provider. The company has a series of offices distributed in many locations around the nation, and whenever a new training or motivational video was release, there was always a question of where to host it. Hosting it in the company's datacenter wouldn't work, as that would consume a lot of bandwidth, and building out a local CDN can be expensive if you don't want to rely on someone else.

Stream is basically providing an internal Youtube, a place where you can upload videos, control who access to them, and let Stream take care of routing, etc.

[dugditches]

The demand is there.

Video content is 'difficult' for smaller to medium companies to manage and deliver. Some things are best taught through video.

You may be thinking in just a sense of an office, but this could be useful for Factories or other slightly skilled labour.

Add in basic messageboard/etc from a trusted brand, who most people already subscribe to with their OS and Software.

However the 'anyone' can upload, seems like an HR disaster waiting. And I suspect will quickly be turned off to a limited few to the few that use this service.

[RoryH]

It's Enterprise Youtube :-/

[cosatelo]

I feel as if this would be excellent if executed by any other company like google

[olyjohn]

A little late to the game, IMO. Solutions like Kaltura have been around for years. There are ton of "enterprise" video offerings on the market that do all these things... But I guess it doesn't matter, Microsoft just making a product will get it adopted no matter if it's actually good or not. Hopefully it's not as terrible as Sharepoint.

[bryanlw]

Kaltura has been around for years and they are a very mature product. However, what makes Microsoft Stream more competitive is the future integration with Office and other Microsoft platforms.

[VOYD]

very cool. You have to wonder how long it will be free, and what AI/ML is pulling from all that data.