Adobe and Microsoft collaborate on Sochi cloud streaming project
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Adobe and Microsoft collaborate on Sochi cloud streaming project

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by Jennifer Smith
Adobe and Microsoft collaborate on Sochi cloud streaming project

Many of the rivalries between the major players of Silicon Valley have raged for years. The battle for supremacy has been fought on a range of digital battlefields, from browsers to plugins. However, as technology has evolved, many former rivals have now become partners, as Adobe and Microsoft recently demonstrated. The two tech titans have joined forces to stream footage from the Sochi Winter Olympic Games in Russia to the masses via the cloud, along with live video streaming workflow provider iStreamPlanet.

Working together
Just a few years ago, the collaboration between Adobe and Microsoft would have been near-unthinkable. Adobe once sought to control the Web video space through its popular Flash plugin, while Microsoft was working hard to promote its Flash alternative, Silverlight. However, thanks to developments in cloud computing, which has rendered proprietary video streaming plugins largely obsolete, the two companies have come together in a historic partnership to bring the Winter Olympics to the world.

In terms of the technical details, Adobe's Primetime TV distribution and monetization platform will be used to deliver the video content, while Microsoft's Azure will handle the transcoding and streaming side of the project. In addition, iStreamPlanet's Aventus will be used to encode the streams at multiple bit rates and insert advertisements into the streams from the games.

Major accomplishments
Although webcasting major sporting events in real-time is nothing new, the scope of the collaboration between Adobe and Microsoft is noteworthy. According to TechCrunch, more than 1,000 hours of video will be streamed throughout the games, covering all 15 sports and 98 events, making it one of the most ambitious collaborative cloud-based video streaming projects in recent memory.

Another interesting result of the partnership is that Adobe and Microsoft continue to work together long after the games have concluded in Sochi. The two tech companies will continue their cloud streaming project for other sporting events, and may license the technology to other communication and broadcasting companies, depending on the success of this initial venture.

As Adobe and Microsoft make history at Sochi 2014, there has never been a better time to master Adobe's extensive range of creative software packages. Taking Adobe training through the American Graphics Institute is an excellent way to learn the fundamentals of programs including Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator, or even enhance the coding knowledge you'll acquire through HTML classes by tackling Adobe's popular Web authoring platform Dreamweaver.

About the author

Christopher Smith is president of American Graphics Institute. He is the co-author of Adobe Creative Cloud for Dummies and more than 10 other books on design and digital publishing. He served as publisher and editor of the Digital Classroom book series, which has sold more than one million books on topics relating to InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere Pro and other Creative Cloud apps. At American Graphics Institute, he provides strategic technology consulting to marketing professionals, publishers designers, and large technology companies including Google, Apple, Microsoft, and HP. An expert on web analytics and digital marketing, he also delivers Google Analytics classes along with workshops on digital marketing topics. Christopher did his undergraduate studies the at the University of Minnesota, and then worked for Quark, Inc. prior to joining American Graphics Institute where he has worked for more than 20 years.