I find myself seriously rethinking my business ideas, how to run things, and which direction to move in every 3 months to 6 months. As any reader of this blog would see, I've put most of my time and concentration into working with Flash Media Server. I've been using the darn thing since it came out as version 1(over 6 years ago?) and haven't stopped playing with it since. Work is very constant and I'd have to say that at times I just have too much work. It's crazy how so many companies are getting on the FMS bandwagon. It certainly helps that the licensing finally relaxed a bit.
This poses a question to me regularly though, should I be developing for FMS only? What about the other options out there that are used to stream just video, socket servers and of course the FMS-like server software like Wowza and Red5?
I'm sure this goes for just about any software really. Should you only use Photoshop? or get familiar with Illustrator too for print stuff, and if that's the case then what about Fireworks etc. Which can then actually move forward to using After Effects for clients that may want more than just still images (you can actually make some very cool still images with AE though..)
Or how about an ASP dev (which I do too) or ASP.net? Should they be aware of how PHP or CFM works? or should they be reasonably proficient in it too so that they can do other types of work?
When you do this you then have to take time away from the original software that you are really good at (in this case FMS) and study something new.
Self Investment.
I'm sure any entrepreneur will feel somewhat the same in that it's a real quandary of when and how to go and make a leap of faith to another technology or even to a subset of the current technology that you may be using. Flash and Flex are great examples actually. I've seen many a Flash dev kind of fight the "move to Flex" idea because it's something new to learn and takes time away from bringing home the bread.
But what can you do? If you don't move forward then you'll get left behind. But herein lies the question... which way is forward?
Which then of course leads me back to the original question of whether or not to use alternate software of what I'm already good at and is working rather well. Isn't there a saying that goes "if it aint broke then don't fix it"? But as well all know very well, that saying can't be applied to every circumstance.
Anyways, I'm definitely all for moving onward and upward and improving the toolset I have and adding to it. It's just that inner turmoil of being a jack of all trades or a king of one. Is it a choice of just one of those or can we have our cake and eat it?
Looking for a whitepaper describing what FMS3 is all about? Well, Lisa Larson was put to the task of describing it in no less than 50 pages! I'm a bit late to put a link on here but I do see that people are searching for info on fms3 and arriving here and this is a good tidbit of information I think. Even though it's on the main page for Flash Media Server on the Adobe site, it's not immediately noticeable I think and a whitepaper such as this should be noted by all that use the server software. So here is a direct link to the PDF whitepaper on FMS3, just in case.
I've read it, it's quite good and describes a lot of the features and performance increases in comparison to FMS2. Definitely recommend checking it out.