Freeserve upgrades to save

Posted on 3 Dec 2002 at 15:41

Freeserve has announced it has moved all of its streaming media services on to RealNetworks' Helix Universal server, saving £15,000 a month.

RealNetworks released the server platform in July, but this is the first major ISP in the UK to fully migrate to it.

With its ability to serve almost any media format, including MPEG 4 (QuickTime) and Windows Media, and its support for multiple platforms, including Windows and Linux, Freeserve now serves all its media from a single server. Previously it had used G4 servers for QuickTime files, Windows 2000 servers for Windows Media and Sun and Linux servers to handle its Real Audio and Video files.

John Gisby, managing director of Freeserve Portals, said: 'With over four million unique users, managing our streaming services effectively is imperative for us. Helix provides up to four times the performance at a lower cost than the separate server equivalents and drastically cuts the management workload. Content is key to our growth but it is only profitable if the media delivery can be made cost-effective, something RealNetworks accomplishes with Helix.'

It is not all gloom for Microsoft. Freeserve is running the Helix Universal Server on Windows 2000. A spokesperson for Freeserve told us of the reason for choosing Windows 2000, 'the majority of our systems and servers run Windows 2000. We have migrated from the Linux platform to Windows 2000 to get a uniform infrastructure. This allows us to give full 24 hour support and better day-to-day management,' she said.

Yet Windows 2000 server includes a free media server, whereas RealNetworks charges by bandwidth used. So how can Freeserve still be saving money? George Fraser, director of Media Systems at RealNetworks told us this is because the Helix Universal Server is 70 per cent more efficient than that bundled with Windows 2000 server - meaning you need less hardware and therefore fewer software licences to stream the same amount of content.

The fact that the Helix Universal server can stream Windows Media files has not caused the acrimony from Microsoft that much of the media had expected. 'It simply allows more companies to stream Microsoft's Windows Media files,' he said, 'even if they insist on running their systems on Linux or other platforms. So it's a boost to Linux and a boost to Microsoft.'

Gisby explained that the real drive behind RealNetworks' decision to make its Helix-based media players, producers and servers capable of handling any format on any platform and to offer open-source licences to the technology was to 'create a great proliferation of the Helix technologies'. Palm recently announced it had used the Helix DNA code to create a media player for its Tungsten range of PDAs.

Author: Matt Whipp