Volera exec talks up caching, content

Earlier this month, Novell spun off Volera to handle its Internet Caching System and Content Exchange products. Network World Senior Editor Deni Connor spoke to Simon Khalaf, president of Volera, about the company and where it is going.

What are the goals of Volera from a product standpoint, and what type of new products might we see?

We are going after the content networking space, which includes caching, content distribution, intelligent switching and content management. Our specific products and solutions will be focused on caching, content distribution and content management. You are going to see products in the next six months in the content management space [with] the ability to distribute and promote content to a distributed caching system. Promotion means pushing content ahead of other content.

How does your strategy for addressing the caching and content distribution arena differ from your competitors?

If you look at the market, you have caching, content distribution and content networking, which is the ability to build end-to-end solutions for content distribution. [In caching], we see Inktomi and CacheFlow as competitors in the U.S. and Network Appliance in Europe. Our strategy is very simple - it is distribution. Get the product to the OEMs and commoditize it. We have 11 OEMs. It is very tough for a direct salesforce to compete with thousands and thousands of salespeople.

In the content distribution area, we have teamed up with Akamai and MirrorImage. Our content distribution product [Content Exchange] is unique. We've set up distribution for it through GlobalCenter. That is a strong differentiator to us against CacheFlow. If you look at Inktomi, it has a play in this space through the Content [Bridge] Alliance. The Content [Bridge] Alliance is faltering since Inktomi had to step in and acquire the assets of Adero.

In the content networking space, our relationship with Nortel is a strong differentiator and so is the product suite we are coming out with in the next six months that can handle the distribution of content across geographically distant networks.

Is the audience for Volera's products the service provider or the large enterprise?

Both. We are seeing a lot of growth in the enterprise. Enterprises are building their own content distribution networks on the Internet and that's who we are going after with the OEM channel. The second market is the content publishers; we are going after them through the Web hosting facilities. The third market is large carrier-class service providers, such as AT&T, WorldCom, Sprint. And we are going after this market with Nortel.

You are going to release two add-on products, Media Excelerator and Secure Excelerator, to your Excelerator caching family (formerly the Internet Caching System) in the next few months. What other applications will Volera develop?

The products that are coming from Volera are focused on streaming media, security and management of content. We would rather let third-party developers create other applications.

Presently, we have an [API] available that will let developers write to Volera's [caching] platform. For example, Edgix is developing an API that takes data from satellites and puts it into the cache. We are working with service providers to do applications, such as ad injection and ad stripping.

Will this API be proprietary, or will it work with caching equipment in general?

Although we are going to offer several interfaces, the API will be specific to Volera. If anybody delivers over the Internet Content Adaptation Protocol [ICAP], we will be able to support it since we support [that standard]. ICAP Version 1 is available now. We plan another API that allows third-party [companies] to develop on their own without assistance from our staff. That will be available later this year.

Volera: www.volera.com