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This week the US National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) are holding their annual convention and Microsoft was there touting their wares. The big Microsoft news was the announcement of some new reference content provider customers and the promise for later this year of DRM (AKA copy protection) for their Silverlight “Flash killer”:
Today Microsoft unveiled details of Silverlight DRM, Powered by PlayReady, the content protection support coming later this year in Silverlight. Silverlight DRM builds on Microsoft’s extensive expertise and experience in content protection and support for hundreds of millions of media players and devices worldwide.
In addition to being compatible with the broadly deployed base of Windows Media DRM 10 content, Silverlight DRM will support live streaming, on-demand streaming and progressive downloads for connected experiences. With the extensibility and openness of Silverlight, third-party solution providers will also be able to build and offer content owners additional choices for their media protection needs.
Microsoft apparently intends to continue their dominance in commercial media DRM software and connoisseurs of the genre will recognize PlayReady as Microsoft’s DRM successor to the the ill-fated PlaysForSure technology that Microsoft threw overboard (along with some unfortunate partners) when they released the Zune.
Other announcements:
Microsoft announced last Wednesday that it was rebranding its disparate healthcare enterprise software offerings under the umbrella name “Amalga.” Here’s a rundown:
“Amalga, the unified intelligence system, is being targeted for release to manufacturing in the first half of calendar year 2008. An early-adopter customer program is being established for the released versions of Amalga HIS and Amalga RIS/PACS, which are focused on healthcare providers in countries outside the United States.”
If it is January it must be time for Microsoft’s Government Leaders Forum Europe where Microsoft regales the assembled bureaucrats with the latest computer technology. This year, Microsoft is pushing the Citizen Service Platform (CSP) which is “an approach to help governments of all sizes more responsively deliver services to citizens via the Internet.”
The Citizen Service Platform doesn’t involve any new products - it is a collection of tools and templates that customize Microsoft’s Windows Live, Office Live, Virtual Earth, Windows SharePoint Services, Office SharePoint Server, and Dynamics CRM for government use. That approach is typical for Microsoft and most other large vendors targeting vertical markets.
In a bit of a surprise, Microsoft today announced that it was acquiring the assets of Global Care Solutions, a small Thai health information systems developer:
Microsoft today announced HealthVault, “a software and services platform aimed at helping people better manage their health information”. The elevator pitch according to Peter Neupert, corporate vice president of the Health Solutions Group at Microsoft, is that:
“People are concerned to find themselves at the center of the healthcare ecosystem today because they must navigate a complex web of disconnected interactions between providers, hospitals, insurance companies and even government agencies.
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The launch of HealthVault makes it possible for people to collect their private health information on their terms and for companies across the health industry to deliver compatible tools and services built on the HealthVault platform.”
Leave out the health slant, and it sounds remarkably similar to an announcement back in 2001:
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