Clearing the chaos made by Microsoft Stream announcement

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Yesterday Microsoft taken Office 365 Video customers into surprise by announcing a new video service called Microsoft Stream. The preview blog is available here.

Microsoft’s plan is that they will evolve Microsoft Stream and over period of time two services(Office 365 Video and Stream) will converge. Later Stream will become the standard video experience in Office 365.

This announcement created lot of chaos for the existing Office 365 Video users. In this blog, we will explore the some of the common questions raises with the existing Office 365 Video users.

1.Why Microsoft is introducing Stream?

Office 365 Video service is built on top of the SharePoint services and the media streaming is provided by the Azure Media Service. This implies some limitation on providing additional features. This made Microsoft to create a fresh service to accommodate new features.

2.Who can sign-up for new Stream preview?

Anyone with their Corporate email account, can sign-up for Stream preview. Stream can be used as a standalone service also. For example, enterprises just need video service can sign up for Stream.

3.Whether Office 365 Video features available in Stream?

Yes, all the features in Office 365 Video will be made available in Stream.

4.Whether additional license to be purchased for Stream?

All the Office 365 E / A / G sku license holders can use Office 365 Video. These license holders are eligible for Stream after GA. To access other features of Stream like anonymous access, auto video transcription, Office 365 users need to purchase add-on license.

5.How to prevent Office 365 users to sign-up for Stream in their tenant?

All the Office 365 tenant users can sign-up for Stream, to prevent this use the below Azure AD cmdlet. Set-MsolCompanySettings -AllowAdHocSubscriptions $false

6.Whether migration service available to move to Stream?

Microsoft not yet revealed plan on the migration and they are striving hard to make this as a seamless as possible.

7.What are the pricing plans for Stream?

Pricing plans for Stream not yet available.

Microsoft not yet revealed plan on the migration and they are striving hard to make this as a seamless as possible.

8.Whether API is available for Stream?

Microsoft is still working plans on the API. Microsoft will provide API support for Office 365 Video for a period of time, even after Stream API is available.