Microsoft has acquired Peer5, an electronic
content-delivery network (eCDN).
The deal, announced today for an undisclosed sum, will support improvements in Microsoft Teams’ live video streaming, the company said.
Live
streaming has become more common in the workplace. Enterprise Content Delivery Networks (eCDN) can alleviate limited corporate network downlink bandwidth to deliver high-quality video streaming and
broadcasting for large audiences of employees.
“The beauty of WebRTC is that no installation is required,” Hadar Weiss, Peer5 co-founder and CEO, wrote in a post, adding that there
are advantages from privacy and security perspectives, "as it runs in [the] browser.”
The Israeli company’s product runs in browsers to optimize the use of bandwidth for
line-of-business applications. Its mesh networks can automatically increase as the number of viewers rises, and its technology can reduce buffering on live video broadcasts.
Global
Market Insights predicts the market for videoconferencing will grow 19% between 2020 and 2026, reaching $50 billion in value by 2026. Zoom now hosts 45
billion minutes of webinars a year.
During 2020, Zoom’s business customer base grew by 470.33%.
Peer5, founded in
2012 by Hadar Weiss, Guy Pesker and Shachar Zohar, has not raised significant funding, only a few million. The company has offices
in Palo Alto, California and Tel Aviv.
It’s also not clear whether Weiss, Pesker, and Zohar will remain with the company as it becomes integrated into Microsoft. Peer5’s employees
will join Microsoft Israel Research and Development.
Microsoft said in a post that it will continue to support eCDN solutions from Microsoft certified partners, in addition to Peer5 eCDN. That
is also the case for current Peer5 customers who want to continue using Peer5 services.