Good News for Streaming Servers

A new report for sale from Cahners In-Stat Group (www.instat.com), a high-tech market research firm, has good news for streaming server sales. According to the report, streaming media will drive the market for servers that deliver multimedia signals from the edges of the Internet to nearly $1.4 billion in 2005.

The report, "Streaming Media Servers - Rich Content Via Internet Protocol,'' forecasts the unit sales and revenues for the streaming media server market through 2005 and features an analysis of companies using streaming media on their Web sites and the advantages of doing so.

The number of streaming media servers sold will nearly double every year through 2003 and then the market will continue to grow, but more slowly, in 2004 and 2005, the report forecasts. New technology will make it possible for servers to greatly increase the number of simultaneous streams they can deliver and the proprietary networks delivering streaming media will consolidate, reducing server demand in 2004 and 2005.

"A streaming media server is a specialized computer system that is placed close to high populations of potential Internet end-users in order to deliver higher quality streaming media,'' said Gerry Kaufhold, principal analyst of In-Stat's Multimedia Broadband Services Group.

The research also found that streaming media make sites attractive to consumers and keeps viewers at a site longer.