** FURTHER UPDATE NOW HERE ***
Macromedia has (quitely) started shipping the next release of Flash Communication Server. It is now called Flash Media Server 2. I am really excited about this new release and it is packed full of new and improved features.
Many people are keen to find out about the licensing and pricing and I must say that there is some good news as well as some bad news in this area. The good news is that there still is a free Developer Edition which allows for a maximum of 10 connections, regardless of bandwidth consumption.
There will be no Personal Edition anymore and this may disappoint some users. However the Professional Edition (still priced at US $4500) is now unlimited in bandwidth. This is great news for high bandwidth applications such as streaming high quality video.
But - and it's a big but - the Professional Edition is also limited in the amount of connections it can accept simultaneously. The limit is set at 100 connections.
While this is a positive change for streaming video applications (the Flash Media Server Pro Edition can push more video than the FCS Pro Edition could if you base it on an average size stream) it is a severe blow for anyone running Flash Media Server as a game server, utilizing shared objects and generally low bandwidth games - this includes myself. 100 connections will basically mean that I can no longer use Flash Media Server for serving games. It will simply become unaffordable if I want to serve 300 to 400 users at once - it would mean stacking 3 to 4 Pro Licenses totalling US $18,000... For these kind of deployments I am better served (no pun intended) sticking to FCS 1.5 for the foreseeable future.
Then there are the what I call Enterprise licenses capable of forming an Origin and Edge setup. The Origin Edition costs US $45,000 and is capable of serving up to 5000 connections while the Edge Edition costs US $15,000 and is basically an extension to the Origin. These licenses should only be intersting to large scale video deployments and they are certainly priced that way.
It seems obvious that Macromedia is steering heavily towards the streaming video market. I personally feel a bit sad about this. While I welcome the unlimited bandwidth options I feel that the connection limit especially that of the Professional Edition is very tight. We now do have unlimited bandwidth yet we may still not be able to push our hardware to the limit without stacking at least 2 Professional Licenses. The days of running Flashcom/Media Server as an affordable multiuser game server may be over, yet other applications will very likely benefit from the new pricing.
I have made it clear in the past that a CPU based licensing would be great. I accept that connections may need to be limited yet I am disappointed that the limit has been set so low. I will have to think about this a bit longer and let the new pricing sink in. I am not sure if this new release will make things cheaper or more expensive for us yet it can work either way depending on what you use FMS for.
Dropping the Personal Edition also means that FMS is now a product less accessible to 'small' developers and projects. The entry price for this platform has just risen sharply.
I hope I do not sound too negative here. FMS is a fantastic product and I have been able to familiarise with its features already. The team has delivered a stable and feature packed server and I congratulate them for their efforts. The pricing and licensing was not something I know anything about until this morning and I am still digesting it right now.
I am keen to hear your comments.
while i simply love the fact the move away from the bw limit, i'm sad seeing they did ALWAYS the same mistake.
Instead of adding choice they CHANGE everything, screwing up the existing market.
This is not they way you keep your customers, MM shuold start caring about upgrades, not only new installs.
They can't provide a server (for many years) which is based EXCLUSIVELY on bwlimit and then change everything basing the solution ONLY on users.
They should have kept both limits, both licenses... allowing existing users to upgrade without having to change from a 1200$ solution (3 personal) to a 45K$ + 2*15K$ solution...
this is madness... absolute madness.
When I think of some of my applications where I keep a connection open purely for the fact that I want to inform a user about an event that may occur once a week I must say that this kind of app will be hard to build using the new licensing.
I am surprised that Macromedia has on one side listened yet on another banged the door right shut. Take this example: FMS2 will enable us to push data into the server which can in turn be pushed out to connected clients. This is a killer feature, no more polling for live data, we could build some really neat apps that respond to a database update for example. Yet in order to use this new feature we must keep users connected to FMS - and that will now be costly. Data only apps will suddenly be more expensive to run than an app pushing 20Mbps of video...
I'm really sorry I didn't buy 5 FCS 1.5 personal licenses yesterday so I have licenses to cover the next year. A cost of
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A cost of Euro 4758 per installation is not possible for us. We have to change to XML sockets I guess...
I love Macromedia, but sometimes I'm suprised that they find their own foot so the can shoot themselves in it...
This sucks....
I'd never use FM2 for any application that didn't require streaming.
We've just costed up a big project based on the old pricing model -back to the drawing board :(
(and our content system uses asp...)
I have attended to the MAX conference in Singapore and if you want data synchronization and live update, use Flex Enterprise Services 2 (beta version is supposed to come before the end of the year and it includes Messaging Services).
Try to see a demo and you will forget about FMS 2 the next second...
For FMS 2, once again the targeted customers are not developers but TV channels, professionals in video and cinema. In FMS 2 you can also install some DRM... this is not by hazard, this is to seduce holywood not the developer community.
FlashCom server is a real elegant way of sending messages between clients in flash. If Flash Media Server is only for streaming then Macromedia really need to make a version for gaming to plug the hole left by Flashcom server. I suggest Flash Gaming Server.
DRM - not true. FMS has no real DRM features and I don't think it needs them but that's a discussion for another day.
You mention Flex Enterprise services... I got to agree with Thomas here, it's expensive and not released yet. Flex has its place yet what I want to do is done well and easily using FCS. With the release of FMS there is no denying that data only services - something MM used to push as one of the great features of FCS - is becoming more expensive. That I don't like.
This new pricing basically destroys our business model, which was developed based solely on FlashComm. The previous pricing structure was bad enough, but we were able to make the math work. With FMS, we'd have to recoup $45 per member before we see a dime of profit; where before we needed to collect just a fraction of that.
We don't need an edge server; we only stream live content. From what I can see, none of the new features are compelling enough to warrant the huge increase in cost for us.
Seems to me that Macromedia has passed all small developers and projects, and those which require many simultaneous connections, to Red5.
As a longtime evangalist of FlashComm, and an entrepreneur whose invested much time and money in Macromedia technology, I'm disappointed to say the least.
Video may be the only profitable or viable buisness with the new model. We, as developers have two choices, switch to a third party alternative or pick up some current java books at Barnes & Noble
If it really is going to be like this then they apparenlty want to kill of the use of their product in multiuser applications.
That being their intention (and I can see no other) then they owe it to exisiting users, who have supported flashcom, sweated over learning it and sold it to their clients and boses on MMs behalf, to help out the RED5 team with their work.
http://osflash.org/red5
It has made progress but needs as much support as possible. This product could become the solution for the smaller companies/projects/solutions. The sooner it hits 1.0 the sooner we all have a free server solution.-e
However it seems like you can still buy licenses through the Volume license program (minimum 5). I just ordered 5 FCS 1.5 personal licenses from Macromedia Europe by phone. This should keep me in licenses until red5 is ready.
This is clearly the end of all the nice multiusers games and apps we saw on the net these last years. We are actually working on a nice multiuser community and this is a major problem (we will not upgrade.
Macromedia what have you made to my favorite multiuser server...and dont say it is only a streaming server...that was not your communication about it before!
Major major mistake...its a sad day...
that's too much , im leaving the boat!
I won't purchase old FCS server either now because there isn't much to look forward to. As a developer I want to place trust in the in the company of the product that I am developing around. I want to be excited and look forward to each new release and not fear it. With the current way that Macromedia is going I'd instead grow more and more weary with each new release. I don't want to feel like Macromedia wants to find new ways reach deeper into my pockets with each release. Instead, Ill be looking forward to each new release of Red5.
Yes, I know that Macromedia (When to be Adobe?) is a large and great company with a great reputation. Macromedia is a gigantic icon among the design and developer community that has provided us with great tools. It seems that Macromedia has continued to increase prices with each new product and release and weve still stuck by them. I'm wondering if the cost of each new is being inflated by ego.
Why doesn't Macromedia realize what their going to lose loyal developers? Maybee they think that it's alright by throwing more money at advertising. It's that advertising that will mostly reaches us developers anyhow. Its us who have praised and promoted FlashComm/FMS media server through selling multi purpose media rich applications to clients. As a community of developers we've helped bring in much revenue for Macromedia and the continued development of this product. Previously I was looking forward to the new release and now I'm left feeling disappointed. I am one of many whom placed Macromedia on a pedestal.
Thank you Macromedia. Thank you for forgetting about me..
1.) FMS 3 Personal with 100 CC users and no bw cap.
2.) FMS 2 Professional with 500 CC users and no bw cap.
What would you say to the folks about Macromedia about that very reasonable proposition? I think they are listening to us...
Oops, I meant FMS 2 of coarse.
In my case this mean a major delay in releasing our upcoming application if we want to switch from FCS to another technology.
WTF give us FCS2 (with limited bandwith) and a FMS2(with limited clients) , this would fix the problem and allow us to continue to work!
We have just spent 6 months setting up a new CAM CHAT area for our Profile site and we was willing to upgrade to the new FMS2 but we would need LOADS of copys to deal with the ammount of users that login.
We will be sticking to FSC 1.5 unless Macromedia stop being tubes and sort it out!!!
Costs them no more to set 100 to 1000!!! its one setting!! Shocking as hell!! sumone should be shot lol... Why give out CHAT APPs etc etc in Version 1.5 if they didnt want it to be used in that way!!!
Bad day for Flash Comm!!!
The funny thing is, this is all so very familiar from the way the Shockwave Multiuser Server users got jerked around five or six years ago as that product -- which provided cutting-edge capabilities for real-time gaming and communications in Director and Shockwave -- went from a great product to a discard in just a few years (and 3 versions). Of course since they killed it in 2001, we've all been told to use the FCS/FMS. C'est la vie!
there was no way to stream a live event in a decent quality via fcs without bhuying extra bandwith packs, etc. the costs exploded and it became imposible to realise it with fcs in comparsion to real, etc.
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Does Java support live video / audio feeds?
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If so, where can I find out more about this?
Rob
Well... I'm working in that direction now. I learned, before Macromedia even announced that they were licensing ON2, that Java already implemented it. I've also recently begun researching methods for capturing USB WebCam audio/video and have discovered that it is indeed possible. I've got a few more steps to take, but eventually, I'll have two or more cameras/clients streaming data to each other without the need to push the stream through a central server.
Again, I think Macromedia makes these sort of things easier, but they are purposefully imposing technological limitation for they sake of increasing profit. That is great since I do own quite a few shares of MACR, but since I'm also a developer... hehehe, I and my company no longer use their software, because we can't justify the expense -- o and NO, I don't want to sell my shares so I can purchase their software. :P
Mr. Stephen Elop
601 Townsend Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
Sorry one thing I couldn't understand, how could Media Server know your bandwidth in use? Your server could install a 10/100/1000M auto-detect Ethernet card, how could Macromedia Media Server software know what kinds of network design you're using? I wonder if it could.
At the time, it was a relief that I didn't have to go through the "lost feeling" that Shockwave Multiuser server users had to go through.
I was new to Flash MX and FCS and felt proud to be using "new" technology. Back then, I also customers gripe Generator's short life.
It seems history repeats itself.
While I like what it tries to do for video streaming (unlimited bandwidth), I am utterly dissapointed in their pricing/licensing model for data-centric applications (games for example).
If they're trying to push away data-centric developers, they sure are doing a great job.
Guess it's time to bite the bullet with TCP sockets.
It's sad because, back then, I viewed FCS not only as a fantastic product but also a great service to Flash developer community (aka FANS of Macromedia) by effectively shielding them away from all the low-level work.
Today, they're throwing us out in the cold with no blankets. I am so very dissapointed in the FMS2 product manager whoever he/she is.
</gripe>
Also remember that they are working on getting the licensing amended, see http://www.flashcomguru.com/index.cfm/2005/11/19/U...