The Internet Streaming Media Alliance, spearheaded by Apple Computer, Cisco Systems, Kasenna, Royal Philips Electronics and Sun Microsystems, is supported by more than two dozen tech companies.
The non-profit alliance was announced at the Streaming Media West conference in the US. The founders have been working together for several months to create the alliance.
Currently, there are several disparate formats for delivering rich streaming media, which has made it costly for service providers, vendors and others to take advantage of the market opportunities, said executives with the alliance founders.
Vendors must make products that can work with the various formats, and users -- both enterprises and consumers -- are forced to buy products that can only handle some of those formats.
With agreed-upon standards, vendors can tailor their products to meet those standards, and users can buy products that deliver a wider range of rich streaming media. It also would increase the interoperability of the products.
"Most of what's out there today is proprietary," said Michael Frendo, vice president of the technology center for Cisco.
Key enterprise role
Streaming media is playing an increasingly larger role in the enterprise, especially for delivering e-learning services and company conferences.
"At Cisco, right now it's impossible to fit 40,000 in a room at one time," Frendo said. "But [with streaming media] we can drive home our message to people at the desktop."
The growth of wireless technology also is fueling the need for standards within the streaming media space, said Ahmad Ouri, vice and general manager of MP4 Net, a division of Philips.
The demand for streaming media in the business world is growing, as was illustrated last month with the partnership between Microsoft and Eloquent and another between Intel and Media 100. None of those companies has signed onto ISMA, although the alliance is open to anyone who wants to join, Ouri said.
The founding members of ISMA have been working on an initial specification for MPEG-4 over IP (Internet Protocol), which will be presented for review at the alliance's first formal meeting in February.
Completed specifications will be published on the alliance's Web site at www.ISM-Alliance.org, which also was launched today. Information about the alliance's activities will be included on the site.
