Microsoft to enhance Live Teams Streaming with Peer5 Acquisition

 Microsoft has acquired enterprise content delivery network (eCDN) provider Peer5, a move getting to improve Teams live video streaming capability. The acquisition of Peer5, announced Tuesday, will optimize Microsoft Teams video, specifically for events broadcast to large audiences.

Peer5 is among several third-party providers that provide a WebRTC-based eCDN offering designed to optimize bandwidth utilization. supported mesh networks, Peer5 provides autoscaling and built-in load-balancing capability. Using peer-to-peer streaming, Peer5 claims it can offload the maximum amount as 95% of the bandwidth coming into a network from the web.

The Peer5 eCDN aims to integrate with different video platforms and video players. Among them: Media Platform, Brightcove, Google Meet, ICV Digital Media, Sequoia and WTV. Peer5 also supports connectivity to CDNs including Akamai, Cloudflare, Fastly and Stackpath.

According to the announcement by Microsoft Teams GM Nicole Herskowitz, Peer5 also reduces the impact of streaming on other applications. that's particularly beneficial to remote workers therein it ensures the video traffic won’t impede network performance. Peer5 runs during a browser; hence, Herskowitz noted that it doesn’t require installation of endpoint software or network upgrades.

“As live streaming becomes more common within the workplace; large organizations need reliable enterprise video streaming solutions,” Herskowitz noted. “Enterprise content delivery networks can alleviate limited corporate network downlink bandwidth to deliver high-quality video streaming and broadcasting for giant audiences of employees. The Peer5 solution will allow Microsoft to supply a first-party offering to assist customers streamline purchase process and customer support, improving their enterprise IT management experience.”

Herskowitz didn't specify whether Microsoft will offer the Peer5 live Teams streaming capability for all Teams subscriptions or simply for premium accounts. It also wasn’t immediately clear when Microsoft will offer Peer5 as a first-party enhancement.

“Microsoft will provide more information when available,” Herskowitz said.

Besides Teams, Peer5 also supports integrated with Microsoft Stream, Office 365 Video, Yammer and legacy Internet Explorer. Hadar Weiss, Peer5’s co-founder and CEO emphasized during a separate post that video broadcasts can cause network congestion. That’s especially a problem during companywide meetings. An email with a video link someone sends to all or any employees also can be a problem, he noted.

“Our technology solves this problem within the most effective way possible, without changing the prevailing network infrastructure,” Hadar noted.
Scaling Microsoft Teams

Microsoft recently extended the capacity of Teams, allowing up to 1,000 participants during a meeting and 20,000 for webcasts. Cisco Webex and Zoom, among others, have also added similar support for giant meetings and webinars. analyst Zeus Kerravala of ZK Research said Microsoft Teams video without the utilization of eCDN doesn't scale well.

“The video quality for Microsoft Tams in small groups is OK,” Kerravala said. “Once you get into larger meetings, the standard does go down. And a part of that's just the way teams is made. It’s still built on tons of the older Skype code, which is encapsulated into a WebRTC client. So, it's a reasonably heavy application compared to the way WebEx or Zoom works. Peer5’s eCDN capabilities takes tons of the load off the network and will give them better quality.”