ISMA, co-founded by Apple, celebrates first year

The Internet Streaming Media Alliance is a non-profit corporation founded by, among others, Apple. ISMA announced today “significant support” of industry-leading companies including Sony, Hitachi Data Systems, Telecom Italia Lab and SRI.

In a statement, ISMA said it reached several milestones since its debut at Streaming Media West in December 2000, including:

The addition of over 30 member companies within the last six months, including AOL Time Warner, Dolby Laboratories, Entriq, Envivio, Hitachi Data Systems, Fraunhofer Institute, iVast, Network Appliance, SRI, Sony, Telecom Italia Lab, Thomson Multimedia;

The formation of active task forces focused on Digital Rights Management, membership and interoperability and testing;

Ongoing interoperability “plug-fest” events, providing environments for solution testing;

The release of ISMA 1.0 Specification, which is designed to accelerated media streaming over the Internet.

The ISMA will host its annual meeting on Feb. 5 in New York. Look for the group to tackle digital rights management issues as they’ve formed a focus group to engage on and work out the best solution for streaming media’s stakeholders (content companies, consumers and technology suppliers). Other areas that the ISMA is expected to address are dynamic scalability, quality of service, higher bandwidth/higher quality technologies, and other relevant technologies.