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RealNetworks Inc's boldest and riskiest move to date, the company is opening source code to its suite of streaming software, and will include support for Microsoft Corp's Windows Media in its streaming server for the first time, writes Kevin Murphy.

While Microsoft is playing its cards close to its chest, speculation is already mounting that the company may challenge RealNetworks for including Windows Media protocol support in its server without permission, though RealNetworks claims its development work was all above board.

At a press conference in San Francisco yesterday, RealNetworks unveiled "Helix", an umbrella brand for its latest generation of software and an industry initiative that borrows its form heavily from the open source process and the Java Community Process.

RealNetworks hopes to blow the streaming industry wide open, allowing commercial and open source developers to build their own streaming media systems.

RealNetworks' own implementation will allow over fifty data types to be streamed, including the major formats: RealVideo, Apple QuickTime, Windows Media, and MPEG

News source: The Reg

SharePoint 2.0 will also include a new version of Small Business Server -- code-named Bobcat -- and SharePoint Team Services 2.0.

"What we're doing with .Net server is, ... [we're] integrating the SharePoint Team Services capability as a foundation for this kind of collaborative routine work, and that's going to begin with SharePoint Team Services 2.0," Raikes said.

Microsoft plans to use SharePoint 2.0 as a core technology to deliver "information workers" additional collaborative capabilities.

"I think it's very important that we think of what we do in the Office world as a smart client for plugging in to SharePoint Team Services," Raikes said.

Microsoft is also working to extend its client environment with the peer-services capabilities of Groove, according to industry sources.

The collaboration efforts contrast with Microsoft's decision in April to abandon its centralized .Net My Services initiative and focus on its Passport authentication service instead in an effort to move to a federated identity management model.

Microsoft also announced last week it will support SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language), signaling that it will work more closely with the Liberty Alliance, IBM, and Sun to develop a common approach to federated ID management.

But some analysts are wary.

"These organizations need to ensure that different authentication and SSO [single sign-on] systems interoperate," said Shawn Willett, principal analyst at Sterling, Va.-based Current Analysis. "[One] problem is that Microsoft is pushing the alternative technology," he added.

The move to stitch the HailStorm architecture into the client/server software stack fits with the overall expansion of the .Net Framework, said Dana Gardner, an analyst at Boston-based Aberdeen Group.

"Are we calling it HailStorm going forward? No. We're calling it Web services and .Net," Microsoft's Mangione said. "But a lot of the thinking around schemas, how you get multiple objects -- frankly, there was, in some cases, overlap with other parts of the company. We were heading down a path of developing multiple ways to access [and store] data, multiple ways to store a contact. And that didn't make sense."