Introducing Microsoft Stream

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Introducing Microsoft Stream: the secure destination to manage and share videos for businesses of all sizes

Video is one of the most powerful ways we connect, communicate and learn today – breaking down geographic boundaries and bringing a distinctly human element to digital interactions. Myriad platforms exist in the consumer space to upload and share live or on demand in a matter of seconds. As one of the most consumed and shared content types on the internet, video is increasingly an important part of our personal lives. We believe video can – and should – be just as impactful in the workplace.

Today we are announcing the free preview of Microsoft Stream, a new business video service that democratizes access to and discovery of video at work. Starting today, anyone with a business email address can sign up for the preview in seconds and begin uploading, sharing and tagging videos in their organization. By taking the “work” out of managing video storage and security, Microsoft Stream enables organizations and their employees to communicate and collaborate with video more easily.

Earlier this year we announced our new approach to business apps and our ambition to remove barriers, encourage innovation and ultimately empower everyone in an organization with better ways to get work done. Microsoft Stream builds on this vision, enabling business users to harness the power of video to achieve more at work.

Today at preview we are delivering the following features and capabilities that make video management and sharing within an organization easy, collaborative and social:
•Sign up in seconds: Get started with Microsoft Stream in as few as five seconds with easy signup and no credit card requirements.
•Easily upload and organize your video: With easy drag and drop capabilities, upload your videos and organize them by either starting a channel or contributing to a channel based on team, group, topic etc.
•Discover relevant content: Enhanced content discovery through “trending” videos powered by machine learning, as well as search by hashtag, most liked videos and other key search terms.
•Watch anywhere, on any device, anytime: View videos in Microsoft Stream on all your devices from anywhere, anytime.
•Secure video management: Manage who views your video content by determining how widely to share within your organization, and to what channels. Secure application access is enabled by Azure Active Directory, a recognized leader in identity management systems, to protect sensitive corporate content.
•Follow what matters: Follow channels to see content you want in your Microsoft Stream homepage.
•Engage with content: Socialize videos by sharing via email, “Like” your favorites and embed videos to webpages within your organization.

Many Microsoft customers have already started to embrace the power of video for their business using Office 365 Video. Microsoft Stream builds upon the learnings and success of Office 365 Video, and over time the two experiences will converge, making Stream the de facto video experience in Office 365. During the preview of Microsoft Stream, there will be no changes to the Office 365 Video experience. We will share more details on future enhancements closer to general availability of the Microsoft Stream service. Learn more about what Microsoft Stream means to Office 365 customers here.

This is only the start. We believe video is going to be truly transformative in the workplace. We see video being a core content type across all solutions we use at work today. We want to share a sneak peek about how we imagine Microsoft Stream evolving:
•Deliver corporate broadcast seamlessly: Increasingly the way organizations are communicating and connecting is through live video. We believe that Microsoft Stream portal should be the destination for both live and video on demand.
•Intelligent video search: We believe true power of video will be realized once we are able to search within the video. Leveraging capabilities such as audio transcription and face detection, we can enable deep search, empowering employees to find relevant content faster.
•Make video part of your business apps and workflows: With the ability to integrate Microsoft Stream with other business apps like PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, SharePoint and other line of business applications, we see great opportunity to leverage the richness of video across apps.
•IT management capabilities: We recognize the critical role IT plays in managing content and user access to internal content. We plan to enable IT to manage access and settings like granting and assigning channel and video access, remove and monitor content and manage what is viewable to specific groups in the organization.
•Microsoft Stream App Ecosystem: We believe our partners will take Microsoft Stream experiences to the next level. Using Microsoft Stream APIs, partners will be able to create custom applications and make them available in AppSource, Microsoft’s marketplace for business applications we announced earlier this month.

We hope you share our excitement for the possibilities in video Microsoft Stream can open up for you and your businesses.

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