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Corporate.Net
Pushin g Past The Hype: Delivering To The Desktop

By Andy Covell You've seen and heard all about them: so-called push products that periodically pull information from Internet/intranet servers and deliver it to client desktops. This technology keeps users up to date with the latest news and information. The hype has been tremendous, and as the push buzz reached dizzying heights a few months ago, headlines touted the death of the Web browser.

Let's get past that right now: Push is not a revolution. The Web was revolutionary. It simplified network publishing while creating an aesthetically pleasing, easy-to-navigate desktop environment for ubiquitous access to information and services via the global Internet. Corporate and consumer-oriented information providers and users jumped on the Web in a big way, and its impact on networked informatio n access has been huge. The Web has earned its place as a revolutionary technology. Push technology, on the other hand, will have nowhere near the broad impact: It is just another in a long string of significant tweaks in the Web-accessible Internet/intranet infrastructure. Tweaks like search engines, ActiveX, Java and streaming media further our abilities for easy, efficient and effective information access and service.

To view the Report card.
Three key push technology developments, however, do merit attention. The first is the imminent release of browsers with built-in push features from Netscape Communications Corp. and Microsoft Corp. These will obviate the need to install and support a separate product, so our users can access pushed content. User s can easily configure browser push tools to keep on top of Web-based news and informatio n, while developers leverage new Web capabilities, such as ActiveX, JavaScript and Dynamic HTML, to create enhanced interactions and services that are pushed to user desktops.

In Network Computing's lab at Syracuse University, we tested the push capabilities of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) 4.0 Platform Preview Release 1 and Netscape's Netcaster Beta 2 (part of Communicator 4.0).

A second technological focal point is the evolution of dedicated-server push products that use proprietary protocols over TCP and User Datagram Protocol (UDP), GUI scripting environments and a variety of content creation and management tools. These cutting-edge products push and maintain complete software applications, and they push frequently updated and high-quality multimedia experiences to the local drive. They avoid the long delays of user-initiated media downloads and the stuttering playback of real-time streaming. They also let content providers tailor content for specific groups or individuals; present advanced t ools for developing and managing content; and provide technologies for scaling, monitoring and administering a proprietary client/server push infrastructure.

Dedicated-server push products can be utilized for a variety of ambitious push applications targeted at consumers, customers, corporate users or business partners. In addition to our tests of built-in browsers, we looked at BackWeb Technologies' BackWeb 2.0 and Marimba's Castanet, two leading dedicated-server push architectures.

The third development is multicast push. Many enterprise push applications--including inventory control, software and system management, and financial portfolio management--can benefit from the bandwidth-efficient, real-time delivery of data and information that multicast push offers. We checked out what some of the leading multicast-enabled push technology providers are up to and report our findings in "Multicast Delivers the Real Thing" (see Network Computing Online, at www.NetworkComputing.com/815/ 815cn2.html). In ad dition, we've explored the definition of a Web channel and how it relates to push technology in "Push Vendors Put Their Own Spins on the Channel" (page 101).

Because the Web browser will soon become a functional push interface, users will have basic push capability. Your users' needs should drive your decision to develop push capabilities beyond your browser's offerings. We'll help you understand the browser push interface's capabilities and look at some of the push tools you can consider using if you opt to develop more advanced push services.

To download an Adobe Acrobat .pdf format version of the Web Browser and Rich Content Push Products Features charts, click here.