Windows Media Services 9 raises bar for Apple, Real Media - Microsoft adds no-tears streaming-media server to Windows Server 2003.(Product/Service Evaluation)

Managing streaming-media servers isn't child's play. Just the chore of managing the content hosted on the server can be daunting, especially when the content changes frequently. Coordinating announcements, advertisements, and popular content can be enough to induce hair- pulling in even a veteran media-server manager. Add to that the need to ensure that client requests don't swamp the server, and taking up a new profession may seem wise.

Businesses that deploy streaming media servers for external use -- the BBCs and CNNs of the world -- can afford to have a dedicated professional staff on hand to supervise the care and feeding of their media server farms. But smaller organizations now have a powerful tool at hand to allow the use of streaming media for their own …