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NEWS
Mar 15th 2000: USi has signed content delivery startup SightPath in a multi-million dollar deal designed to push its hosted applications literally to the edge of the provider's network infrastructure. Under the agreement, the top-tier ASP will purchase and deploy SightPath�s intelligent content delivery technology as part of a new service to be branded USiAccelerate. The service will give users faster, more reliable access to USi's application services, as well as supporting widespread availability of new, rich media enhancements as they emerge. Sightpath, whose technology differs from Web caching solutions by providers such as Akamai, Inktomi and Novell through its integral network-wide dynamic load-balancing, is aiming to add other ASPs and network service providers to its customer base. USi's deployment will begin with forty nodes in June, spreading to eighty USi sites by the end of the year. BroadVision and Ariba will be the first applications to benefit, followed by USi's other software partners, Microsoft, PeopleSoft, Sagent, Siebel, Niku and Lawson. The enhancements will be offered as an incremental option for those customers seeking improved performance. Typical prices will range from $7,000 to $12,000 per month for a large BroadVision customer. "This deployment will provide an optimization of the USi network for software services that we currently run and will run in the future,� Chris McCleary, USi chairman and CEO, told press and analysts attending today's launch. "What this means is that Broadvision operating in the USi network infrastructure will be optimized, and specifically, the one to one personalization, features and functions of Broadvision will run better and more robustly in our infrastructure with this latest development. �Having focused on the best software providers and on making our infrastructure fine-tuned and optimized, [we now have] the ability to focus our attention on making new software applications run better,� he added. Kurt Gastrock, USi's VP of engineering, said USiAccelerate �is intended to provide dramatic performance improvements for users accessing business critical systems." In tandem with the ASP's 'Priority Peering' architecture for ensuring consistent access to Internet bandwidth, "It raises the bar yet again for delivering to the ASP market,� he said. SightPath - an eighteen-month-old company founded by MIT technologists - launched its content delivery product in the second half of last year. There are three supported service types: accelerated static content, reliable on-demand streaming media and massive live streaming in real time. Its Self Organizing Distributed Architecture (SODA) dynamically load-balances the delivery of content across the network, bypassing bottlenecks and smoothing hotspots in demand. Content delivery nodes can be sited anywhere on the network, including inside of customer firewalls. SightPath says its solution enables TV-quality media, software distribution and other high bandwidth applications without congestion. However the product is so new that currently it remains in the demonstration stage with a handful of customers. Report by Lisa Paul
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ANALYSIS
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