Silverlight Makes Good For Government Webcasting

Much has been speculated about the success—or lack thereof—of Microsoft's Silverlight, but beyond the hype and criticism there are real companies doing real things with the technology in order to have a real impact on the rich media experiences they're able to deliver.

A prime example of this is Granicus, a company that helps enable local governments to webcast their public meetings online both live and on demand. They've already launched their first twenty deployments of their Silverlight-enhanced platform and have plans to roll out across their customer base by the end of the year.

The decision to go with Silverlight versus Flash was actually pretty straightforward for Granicus because of its historical reliance on Windows Media. "For us as a company, it's fantastic because we can take this huge set of Windows Media assets and push them out through Silverlight without having to go and reestablish our technology or transcode our content," says Tom Spengler, CEO and cofounder of Granicus.

While deployment is limited to date, Granicus is already getting a lot of positive feedback for its Silverlight-enabled platform, especially for its ability to overcome the compatibility issues they encounter when relying purely on Windows Media. "If our customers are really trying to affect government transparency, then Silverlight's ability to work cross platform is really important," says Spengler. "They can't say to their constituents, 'Hey, if you have a certain browser you can't see this government meeting’."

And Spengler shares that their customers are loving the higher quality video Granicus is delivering through Silverlight.