is MS Stream really better than o365 video?

Saurabh Dhall - We are doing our best to incorporate as much as possible as quickly as possible from O365 Video into Stream, but  as you mention there is a gap between the two products today at this point in time. On the Stream side though we have added several new features there only that does make moving from O365 Video, we hope worth it now and even more so as time goes on and we close the gap.

I will try and answer your questions as best as possible. Many of the things you mentioned are on our roadmap but we can't promise you timeline/date when they will be completed. We are also in the process of publishing the "in development" roadmap items to the official O365 Roadmap for further insights into what we are working on.

1. We’re on highest o365 plan, E5 - In O365 Video app I’ve unlimited kind of (1tb) space and I can buy more if required very easily, but in MS Stream I can’t do that, why is that?

Originally we didn't have the Stream storage add-on available via the commerce system. However, that has gone live in the last month or so. You can now buy additional Stream storage if desired. See this article: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/stream/storage-add-on

2. My users can record video on phone and upload it using the o365 app on iPhone which is a superb way of collaboration, however it can’t be done on MS stream, when are you delivering a fix for this?

We do not have a Stream mobile app available today. This is on our roadmap for the the future but not actively developing against it so can't' give you a solid timeline. However, the Stream web page is mobile friendly so if you load Stream on your phone in a web browser you can upload a video from your camera roll.

3. Can I please see the strategy roadmap for the stream app? It’s important that we know this before we launch this at work, because one of your rep told us that O365 Video App will be decommissioned, and Stream will take over soon in the future, please share the roadmap of stream for the next 1year.

See some details from #2 above. We will be publishing new roadmap items to the O365 Roadmap in the coming weeks. That will give you a good glimpse into specific features that are currently under development or will be starting develpment soon. In addtion you can watch our Ignite session which shows of things coming soon and what's our plan for the coming year.

https://myignite.microsoft.com/videos/54998

4. Also, the pricing is unclear to us, 500gb for the tenant isn’t enough for us, we’ll require more than that. How much will be the cost if we want to have 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB or 5TB in our tenant? P.S – we’re on Office 365 E5 Plan.

You get 500 GB for your teanant + 0.5 GB per licensed user to get the total Stream storage available to you. This is pooled together and applied to the tenant as a whole. If you need more than that you can buy extra storage as an add-on in 500 GB chunks.  For more info see these instructions: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/stream/storage-add-on

5. Can we setup some alert notification on each video upload, so the O365 Admin or HR can monitor the content?
6. Can we configure in a way the video can be uploaded by the user, but can only by published by the HR or IT post the review?

No we don't have any feature like this in Stream. We are going to start working on Stream APIs in the coming months and after that integration with MS Flow. When APIs and/or Flow is available you could build some sort of tool yourself to do this. In addition you could add you votes/comments to this idea in our ideas forum on the same topic: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Stream-Ideas/Administrator-content-approval-for-end-user-uploads/idi-p/79709/jump-to/first-unread-message

7. We want people to be able to upload the video, but shouldn’t be allowed to create the channels or groups, is it something we can do?

Currently in product we have a single setting that controls who can upload and create companywide channels.  We have a small project that will hopefuly be finished in the coming few months to split that to be 2 seperate settings. 1 to control who can upload and 1 to control who can create companywide channels. In addition since Stream groups are just O365 Groups there are already a set of O365 Groups controls you can use (via powershell) to determine who can create new O365 Groups and who can't. Stream already respects those settings. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Manage-who-can-create-Office-365-Groups-4c46c8cb-17d0-44b5-9776-005fced8e618?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

8. As an O365 Admin, can I enable / disable stream for all the users easily (and not by getting into each user’s assigned licenses)..?

We don't have a simple on/off setting for Stream. You can disable it for everyone by unlicensing users but it sounds like you don't want to do that. The only other way is to block the Stream AAD ID. This will make it so when a user tries to login to Stream it just blocks them and logs them out immediatly before they can access Stream. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/stream/disable-user-organization#how-to-turn-off-microsoft-stream-for-everyone

9. Can I pick-up and chose the video I want to put up in the spotlight (banner carousel) of the video portal?

This feature to spotlight videos on the Stream home page is in the process of being deployed to production. We've deployed it in a hidden state to start with to most data centers the rest should get it in a hidden state this week. After we test it a bit more and fix known issues then we'll turn this feature on for everyone. If you want to try out the home page spotlight feature now you can do so with a special querystring parameter. You'll also see the new admin screens and storage quota details where you can see how much storage you've used.

Check if your Stream tenant has the latest build. 

Stream > ? > About Microsoft Stream > Version 1.0.930.8 

Set the spotlight videos via the new admin screens:

https://web.microsoftstream.com/admin?AdminSettingsV2=true&AdminSettingsSpotlight=true&DataUsageReporting=true

See the spotlight videos on the home page of Stream via this url:

https://web.microsoftstream.com/?AdminSettingsV2=true&AdminSettingsSpotlight=true&DataUsageReporting=true

10. Is there any way I can see how many videos gets uploaded in a month and what’s the average hits on a channel, and the amount of time people spending on the video?

No we don't have any of these sorts of admin ROI reports or analytics. Today in product we only have the total view count, like count, and comment count per video. We have on our roadmap first to add basic analytics like we have in O365 Video at the video level showing trends of views/unique users overtime along with a drop off chart showing which part of a video is viewed most.

After basic stats per video we'll look at doing something deeper related to admin/channel/group stats and possibly getting to a often requested feature of "WHO" watched a video from which regions/departments/etc and did they watch the whole thing.

If there are other questions or concerns let us know. I know we have a good ways to go, but I hope you see that we are making progress and are willing to work with us as we grow Microsoft Stream.