A year after acquiring Israeli broadcaster Pier 5, Microsoft has launched a new technology based on the company’s development of high-quality video streaming for high-end live broadcasts.
Technology developed at Microsoft’s main R&D center in coastal Herzliya will be integrated into the teams, the tech giant’s business communication platform and answer to Zoom and Slack, both of which surged in popularity at the onset of COVID-19. As the pandemic, home-work and hybrid workplaces begin to take shape.
Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011, but it never became a business tool, and Skype for Business was finally discontinued last summer. Meanwhile, Microsoft, with more than 70 percent of the desktop operating system (Windows) market share, has worked to build its strength as a leading operating system and software provider, and business communications – chat, meetings, conferences, collaboration – on teams. A plus for organizations like Microsoft 365 Business.
In January, Microsoft officials said Teams surpassed 270 million monthly active users. Before the outbreak, the software had about 32 million users.
In a statement, Microsoft Israel said that Peer5 technology will help to significantly improve video streaming quality in large-scale live broadcasts without burdening networks and “allow organizations to conduct simultaneous streaming events for millions of users,” such as company-wide training programs and virtual town halls.
Peer5 was founded in It was founded in 2012 by Israeli entrepreneurs Hadar Weiss, Guy Paskar, and Shachar Zohar, and subsequently introduced an in-browser-based Enterprise Content Delivery Network (eCDN) to improve bandwidth utilization with mesh networking technology. The company claims to have hosted live online events for up to two million concurrent users, and its products are used by more than 1 billion people worldwide.
Michal Braverman-Blumenstyk (right), corporate VP at Microsoft Corporation, general manager of Microsoft Israel Research and Development Center, and Microsoft Security Technology Officer with Hadar Weiss, product manager at Microsoft Israel Research and Development Center. (Nethanel Tobias)
“When too many employees are released at the same time, the network becomes congested,” Weiss explained in an article announcing the Microsoft acquisition last year. Our technology solves this problem as effectively as possible without changing the existing network infrastructure.
“Our new technology reduces network congestion and provides secure, high-quality and wide-area live video streaming,” Weiss, who currently serves as a product manager at Microsoft’s Israel Research and Development Center, told The Times of Israel. Optimized network performance.
“It’s designed to enable organizations to seamlessly and securely host global meetings, town halls and company-wide training, connect people and organizations, and connect with employees from anywhere,” Weiss added.
Microsoft Israel “Since remote work has become widely accepted in the labor market, the ability to create internal communication in the company has become very important, because these meetings improve communication with the company’s employees and maintain their participation in the company.”
Separately, Microsoft plans to expand its footprint in Israel in the coming years, with five additional sites in the country and a doubling of its R&D workforce by 2025.
Microsoft’s new campus in Herzliya. (Amit-Geron)
Microsoft currently operates development centers in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Nazareth, and inaugurated a 46,000 square meter campus for its R&D Israel headquarters two years ago. In the year By the end of 2020, Microsoft employed an estimated 2,300 people in Israel—2,000 of them in R&D, working on projects including cybersecurity, AI technologies, big data, and healthcare. About 300 people work in sales and marketing.
The company It has seen significant growth in development centers in 2020 and 2021, and hopes to add more than 2,500 engineers and other roles in the coming years to build a domestic workforce of more than 4,500 people.
The five planned locations include a second location in Tel Aviv on 25,000 square meters to accommodate more than 1,000 employees, an additional 17,000 square meters adjacent to the Herzliya site for 1,000 more employees, and two new development sites. According to the company, they will open in Beersheba and Jerusalem next year to test the capabilities of underrepresented sectors such as Orthodox Jews and Israeli Arabs.
The location of the fifth site is still under consideration, taking into account concerns such as workforce diversity, transportation and work-life balance, Microsoft said.
Microsoft in 2010 In 1989, it opened a local branch in Israel and in 1991 established its first R&D center outside the US in Israel.
