Thoughts on Flash Media Server 3 and what's going to happen next

I'm kind of curious as to what others are thinking about the new version of Flash Media Server that should be coming out soon (I hope). Here is a bit of information via Kevin Towes (have to scroll down and click the "protecting and distributing content with FMS3").

There is some good info in there on some new features and I'm sure more will leak out soon (can't imagine they were all in that one preso). Looking forward to seeing those, and of course as soon as I find them I'll post here just in case.

But either way, I think I'm definitely looking forward to some changes. Here are a few of my requests:

- Better licensing scheme
- Better pricing to go with that better licensing scheme
- Multicasting
- Better performance (which they say they have done)
- Screensharing would be really nice, but that's a flash player issue..
- Not sure if I care too much about DRM.. but lot's of others do. So having it and knowing about it is good for business
- Did I mention pricing and licensing changes?? ah yes.. I did
- AS2 or even AS3 on the server side. Prototyping everything is getting like working on something antiquified.. like a commodore 64 or something. Not too efficient or clean sometimes

hrmm.. lots of others I'm sure but I'm more curious as to what others have taken out of that presentation by Kevin and what they would like to see further change with FMS.

Right now demand for FMS is good, I'm never ever out of work and most of the other FMS devs out there that I know are booked up for months with stuff. It's crazy. But at the same time there isn't a high demand for FMS stuff thanks to the lack of information about FMS and how to develop for it, which makes for a bit of a steep learning curve to get in, and then the licensing and pricing for it right now. For information, there is of course flashcomguru, my blog, fczone, the newly released fmsguru.com and a few others (sorry if I don't recall them off the top of my head, stick them in the comments if you know of any and I'll update this post)... I guess there is also Adobe's site, but that's a given.

If you were to compare the Coldfusion community, or Flash community or Photoshop or After Effects community, FMS community is pretty slow. The mailing list that Stefan runs off of flashcomguru is almost non existant lately. New people just aren't getting into it lately. Makes me wonder.

But, I'm all for seeing FMS apps get developed and for more FMS developers to come out and show their stuff. I still feel (even though the entry point is high) that FMS has huge potential, it's just that Adobe needs to put a bit more muscle behind it. Hopefully FMS3 will see that muscle and a big push will be made to get it out into the public much more.

Anyways, any thoughts on the above would be great. Please post in the comments.

Posted by Graeme at November 13, 2007 09:40 AM