Silverlight Makes Good For Government Webcasting

But where things start to really get interesting for Silverlight and Granicus isn't just in cross-platform compatibility and higher video quality, it's in utilizing Silverlight's advanced features and functionality.

Their first initiative to do this has been in developing closed captioning capabilities. Long a feature of delivering government video on TV, now Granicus users gain the same functionality online, providing an easy way for them to make these videos more accessible to viewers who may be hard of hearing. This feature is working out in the field now, and when they first launched it a few months back it was the first time they'd heard of Silverlight being used to enable closed captioning.

As of right now, Granicus is only using Silverlight for their video player and this closed captioning functionality, but CTO and cofounder Javier Muniz sees great things on the horizon. "When Silverlight 2 is released we'll definitely be looking to do a lot more interactive features. The exposure of the .NET platform as a development platform is going to give us a lot more capability as far as developing interactive features," he says.

In the meantime, Granicus is encouraging greater awareness among its customers as to the possibilities of their Silverlight-enhanced platform by recently introducing an Excellence in Silverlight award. This award ties into four other categories they've already announced with this initiative aimed at discovering how their customers are using their platform to affect great things in local government. Communities are submitting entries now and winners will be announced later this summer.

While still only in somewhat limited release, news about Silverlight is spreading through Granicus's customer base, and whereas a few months ago they were pushing to find beta test sites, today they've got many customers calling in to request an upgrade to Silverlight, suggesting that at least in some circles excitement is building for Microsoft's interactive platform.

And throughout this whole process, Granicus shares that Microsoft has been an eager and accessible partner, with regular conversations between the two companies' techies and Granicus having the ability to get questions answered quickly when they run into problems.

All in all, the move to Silverlight has been a resounding success for Granicus, and they're eager to see where their use of Silverlight can take their platform and the ability of local governments to more effectively communicate with their constituents on into the future.