Microsoft announced the acquisition of Peer5,  a developer of a technology that enables large-scale live video streaming solutions. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 2012, Peer5 claims to be the largest peer-to-peer content delivery network. It offers a WebRTC-based enterprise content delivery network (eCDN) that optimizes bandwidth usage. Its self-balancing mesh networks automatically scale as the number of viewers increases—resulting in high-quality live video streaming for larger audiences. Peer5 has raised USD 3.5 million in funding to date, and facilitated large-scale events with as many as 2 million concurrent users with its technology being used by more than 1 billion users.

Microsoft intends to integrate Peer5’s eCDN technology into Microsoft Teams to enable large-scale live video streaming. 

Quicktake : The acquisition bolsters Microsoft’s enterprise communication and collaboration offering, Teams. Microsoft seems to be preparing Teams to facilitate the adoption of hybrid work policies where organization-wide training programs, conferences, and virtual events are the norm. This requires significant upgrades in infrastructure which Peer5 is expected to provide. Microsoft’s efforts to facilitate hybrid work are well documented with the recent unveiling of its virtual reality platform “Microsoft Mesh'' which is planned to be integrated with Teams.