Today at the National Association of Broadcasters convention, NAB2006, Microsoft Corp. and Ascent Media Europe, a leading provider of content creation, management and distribution solutions for the media and entertainment industries, announced a new alliance to deliver one of the United Kingdom�s first implementations of a distributed digital media archive, designed to enable content owners to significantly speed up the overall production process across multiple locations and help reduce operating costs. Combining Microsoft� Connected Services Framework and Ascent Media�s Atlas services, this advanced new system will be made available to media and entertainment customers across the U.K. and Europe, transforming their businesses to run on digital-file-based workflows and archives.

�This alliance enables media companies to cut content delivery times from days to hours and, over time, will reduce operating costs typically associated with the delivery of physical content to customers,� said Brenda Smith, group managing director, Europe, for Ascent Media. �Our strategic investment and expertise is enabling our European clients to pass on these cost savings to their clients.�