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Inktomi's streaming cache
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August 14, 1998: 4:49 p.m. ET
Real Networks partnership yields first cache for streaming multimedia
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SAN FRANCISCO (The Red Herring) - If Inktomi builds it, RealNetworks will stream it.
That's the message put out Tuesday as the two companies announced a strategic partnership.
The companies said carriers using Inktomi's (INKT) Traffic Server software will be able to deliver RealAudio and RealVideo "streams" -- multimedia files delivered in real time, not a single lengthy download. While streaming improves the user's experience, it can make heavy demands on data networks. Network caching technology used in Traffic Server allows users downloading similar files to access a single copy stored on a server closer to them, improving download times and using less bandwidth.
"In terms of uniqueness, this will be very hard for anyone to duplicate," said Inktomi founder and chief technology officer Paul Gauthier. "This is the first streaming protocol caching product on the market, and it makes Traffic Server a rich platform on the network."
Gauthier says that competitors will find Inktomi's scalablity difficult to match. "Most other vendors are taking the caching-toaster type of approach," he says, referring to the hardware-based systems used by most caching products. "(That) will make it a daunting challenge for any of them to run a streaming audio or video protocol. But this has been a key part of our vision from the beginning."
Inktomi contends that by offering software-based caching, Internet service providers, backbone operators, and other vendors charged with pushing content through to users can bring streaming media that much closer to the viewer, lessening network congestion and packet loss.
Inktomi has already signed up some of the biggest names on the Internet, such as America Online (AOL), Yahoo (YHOO), and @Home (ATHM), and some of them will be the first users of the new service.
"@Home is a perfect example of a company which has been waiting for us to do this," says Gauthier. "One of its interests when we first started talking was the development of this type of service."
Gauthier contends that as the network pipes gets bigger over the last mile -- the crucial connection to users' homes -- the need for caching becomes exponentially greater, because users do not want to pay up for high-speed access only to have an uncached network slow them down.
Buy, quoth the underwiter
Jim Wade, technology analyst with BT Alex. Brown, heard the news about Inktomi's enhanced streaming multimedia cache and liked it. (Alex. Brown acted as an underwriter for Inktomi's initial public offering.)
"The company made a big deal on their IPO that they were going from the search engine market to the caching market, and that they could add functionality to the caching side," said Wade. "This is the fulfillment of that promise."
Wade also indicated that technology shared with RealNetworks (RNWK) -- which both companies will market, as will RealNetworks sales partner Sun Microsystems' (SUNW) -- will soon have an extensive number of beta sites, and that he expects those beta sites will have a good chance of turning into caching customers.
Daniel Rimer, analyst with Hambrecht & Quist and another underwriter of Inktomi's offering, is equally bullish on the company's fundamentals and the potential for caching products.
"I think the company is in its early stages, clearly, but this all bodes well for Inktomi," said Rimer.
"There's a lot of technology that needs to go into bandwidth for the Internet and this is one of the companies that has real promise," adds Wade. He emphasizes his fundamental belief in the value of Inktomi within the future Internet infrastructure.
"How big is this side of the caching market? Big enough to drive a truck through, and big enough for companies like AOL and Digex to sign on as customers," says Wade. "As a technology story, if you believe in Cisco (CSCO) and Lucent (LU), you should believe in Inktomi." 
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