[Businessteam] Content delivery spec gets industry backing

Message-ID: <6B75EF096AE0BE428B8CEDEA89C5F6327823D3@exchange01.lab49.com> · Thu May 17 14:30:42 2001 UTC

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http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2001/0515content.html : 
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  Content delivery spec gets industry backing    By Jennifer Mears 

 Network World Fusion, 05/15/01 

   Software vendors and content delivery providers are throwing their 
support behind a proposed standard language designed to ease the delivery
of 
personalized dynamic content over the Web. 

Called Edge Side Includes (ESI), the language is based on HTML-like tags 
that can be inserted into applications to identify fragments of Web pages 
that can be assembled and updated at the network's edge. The idea is to 
speed up the delivery of dynamic content and cut down on infrastructure 
demands. 

Content delivery network provider Akamai and software maker Oracle
unveiled 
the language last month, but at that time no other vendors came out in 
support of the effort. ATG, BEA Systems, Circadence, Digital Island, IBM, 
Interwoven and Vignette Tuesday announced their involvement as co-authors
of 
the markup language. In addition, Fort Point Partners, KPE, Macromedia, 
Mirror Image, Open Market and SilverStream have endorsed the proposed 
standard. 

The support of a cross-section of industry leaders gives ESI increasing 
momentum as it seeks adoption as an open standard, observers say. 

"It increases the likelihood that Edge Side Includes will make it to 
mainstream applications," says Neal Goldman, director of Internet
computing 
strategies at The Yankee Group. 

The companies plan to submit ESI to a standards body by the end of May,
but 
they declined to say which one. 

Already, Akamai is incorporating ESI into its EdgeSuite product, which 
delivers dynamic content from the edge of the network, and Oracle is 
incorporating the language into its 9i application server, which includes 
caching technology. That means users can easily switch between the two 
technologies without retagging or changing a line of code, company 
executives say. 

Joe Seibert, CIO at Viacom, an Akamai customer, says if other vendors 
incorporate ESI into their products, users will be able to develop
flexible 
applications more quickly and economically. 

"As we tie together all of the different technologies that we use to move 
content around, it will be a lot easier to develop applications to move
that 
content through application servers, distribution networks and content 
management systems. That's really the issue," he says. 

Seibert says another big issue is choice. If vendors are using an open 
standard, users can easily move from one technology to another, he says. 

"Standards allow us to choose between the technology providers and know
that 
we don't have to rewrite and reposition the way that we deliver content,"
he 
says. "I don't want to back myself into any particular solution." 

That's what's been on the mind of Eric Schvimmer, vice president of 
technology at Washingtonpost.com. Washingtonpost.com distributes about 15%

of its traffic on Akamai's network of more than 10,000 geographically 
distributed cache servers. But Schvimmer says he's been reluctant to use 
Akamai's EdgeSuite product to move dynamic content out to the edge. 

"We're evaluating it, but the one thing I have a problem with is the 
proprietary nature of it," he says. "If the standard is put in place, then

we'll have to look real hard at it."Schvimmer says the open standard will 
make his applications "transportable," no matter what infrastructure
they're 
launched on. 

"The reason the standard is so important to us is that if I do use
Akamai's 
current product, I'm locked into a very proprietary solution and I've got
to 
recode all my applications if I ever decide to break my relationship with 
Akamai," he says. "We don't want to be locked into a single vendor." 

Copyright 2001 Network World, Inc. All rights reserved 
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