Flash Media Interactive Server 3

[michael.prescott]

Perhaps pricing doesn't prohibit large media companies, but it sure prohibits
most developers and small businesses. I'm not interested in trying to compete
with the big television networks or Youtube by delivering streaming video, so
the $995 Flash Media Streaming Server 3 for video isn't a solution. However, I
would LOVE to use Adobe products for my multi-user applications, but Flash
Media Interactive Server 3 at $4500 insures that only VERY large budget
companies... scratch that... very large budget projects can justify using it.
SURELY, a version for small business, low-priced products and services can be
released? Or, maybe the pricing is mixed up and the video streaming version is
supposed to be $4500 while the version for "delivering interactive social media
applications" should be $995?

[abeall]

Yeah, when I saw there were two versions, I started to get excited. The names
"Flash Media Server Interactive" and "Flash Media Server Streaming" were
confusing, so I went straight to the comparison page:

http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/compare/

But remained pretty confused:
- No mention of connections between the different versions (apparently it is
unlimited for both FMSI and FMSS, and the typical 10 for FMSDev)
- No mention of server side abilities, ie SSAS, RSO
- AMF3 is only for FMSS? What am I missing that it would be called FMS3 and
not have AMF3? Doesn't that make it FMS2?

So I headed over to flashcomguru.com to see what he had to say:

"The server now ships in two editions, the Adobe Flash Media Streaming Server
3 (FMSS) is ideal if all you want to do is serve up live or on demand video
while the Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server 3 (FMIS) gives you access to all
features including video recording, server side Shared Objects and more."

That's disappointing... FMSS is, like you, exactly the opposite of what I
wanted. I want the interactive abilities, the ability to easily and reliably
push synchronized data to connected clients, and easily write server side
application controllers (ie Server Side ActionScript). It looks like that is
exactly what FMSS doesn't give you, and FMSI is still prohibitively priced.

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