Sky unveils technical partners for new interactive TV portal

July 6th 2005-Sky Interactive have announced the initial group of technical partners that are supporting the development of its new interactive TV portal.

Scheduled to launch later this year, the portal will allow website owners to deliver their services to a potential audience of 20 million users via the television.A key objective behind the launch of the portal is to make it easier than ever before for e-business operators to establish a presence in interactive TV.

The technical partners unveiled today – Azoth, Demon, Microsoft, and Tamblin – will offer a range of services to facilitate the end-to-end process of developing and hosting content on the portal.

Services to be provided by the partners  will include:

Azoth: Sky has collaborated with software development company Azoth to bring to market a full desktop development suite and editor for sites in WTVML, the technology that was developed by Sky and subsequently made available as a public standard.

The new product, WTVStudio (www.wtvstudio.com), will be available in “Lite� and “Professional� versions, enabling site operators to choose between templated content formats and a more sophisticated editor with full preview and simulation capabilities.

Demon: Demon will provide flexible and secure hosting services on the Sky portal from as little as .11.75 per month including VAT. The Demon Web Hosting platform has been enhanced to automatically enable interoperability with interactive TV and support sites that will be available via the Sky portal.

Microsoft: Microsoft has partnered with Sky and ArtemisCorp to enable organisations to quickly and efficiently build, deploy, and maintain content-rich internet services delivered over the Sky interactive TV platform using WTVML. The ArtemisCorp CMS.RAPID (www.cmsrapid.com) solution is based on the popular Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 (www.microsoft.com/cmserver) which provides easy-to-use authoring tools and streamlines the publishing process.

The solution empowers the business user to create, publish, and manage their own interactive TV content which creates a competitive advantage for the business and increases customer satisfaction. By reducing the need for any IT complex site maintenance, the Microsoft solution can lower the overall costs of achieving and maintaining an interactive TV presence.

Tamblin:Tamblin is to launch a new software tool for developing and publishing content on the portal. i-ZoneTV. On-Demand for e-business offers pre-tested templates and an on-demand pricing model, enabling website operators to launch services quickly and at low cost.Following significant interest in the new portal from the web community, Sky is creating a beta programme for website owners interested in developing a presence in interactive TV. Organisations that register for the programme will be able to receive detailed information about the portal, review relevant products and services and take part in online forums where they can ask specific questions to a dedicated team from Sky.

Ian Valentine, Technical Alliances Director at Sky Interactive, said:“Sky’s new e-business portal will make it easier than ever before to launch an interactive TV service. We welcome the industry’s support for the portal and we look forward to working with our partners to introduce mass market, industry strength tooling and content management systems to help website operators realise the potential of service delivery to interactive TV."

For more information, visit:

http://www.skyinteractive.com

http://www.demom.net

http://www.azoth.com

http://www.tamblin.com