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."

Content delivery spec gets industry backing

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