Inktomi Reaches for the Enterprise

Inktomi (www.inktomi.com) rolled out a suite of new enterprise offerings on Tuesday. It also announced the acquisition of San Francisco-based eScene, a publisher of streaming content. Financial terms of the deal were not released.

Inktomi's new software products for enterprise companies include Inktomi Media Publisher, Inktomi Traffic Core, Inktomi Traffic Edge and Inktomi Traffic Controller. Additionally, Inktomi formed alliances with eRoom Technology, Inc., an enterprise collaboration company, and Netegrity, an e-business solutions provider. The alliances will help Inktomi customers to access collaborative documents published within eRoom's workplace and help search function through Netegrity.

"Our announcement today is a springboard for Inktomi as we introduce a range of new products, alliances and customers to expand our core network infrastructure business and heighten our competitive edge in the marketplace," said David Peterschmidt, president and CEO of Inktomi, in a statement. "The combination of Inktomi's new media, networking and search products will provide enterprises and service providers with critical solutions to streamline the delivery, retrieval and management of rich content across global networks, enhancing user productivity and increasing return on investment."

Full Suite for Enterprise Customers

According to Peter Galvin, VP and GM of enterprise solutions for Inktomi, the company saw different needs for its enterprise and service provider customers. Galvin said that enterprise customers look for turnkey solutions that they can drop in their networks. "Service providers," he said, "need the building blocks to build service to differentiate themselves against their competitors. We announced a set of product offerings that cater to both marketplaces." Inktomi said it can now handle publishing, distribution, retrieval and management of rich media content.

Through its acquisition of eScene, Inktomi is offering what it calls Inktomi Media Publisher, to help companies integrate, publish and index streaming information. "Especially in the enterprise, there's a real need for media publishing tools that allow different people to become publishers of content," said Galvin.

eScene's web-based publishing system allows users to manage live and on-demand streaming events like executive broadcasts, earnings announcements, training, and more. It also has a built-in e-commerce capability that lets providers offer pay-per-view, subscription, and syndication events.

At the core of the company, however, is Inktomi's caching solution. Through its acquisition of FastForward Networks last year, Inktomi gained the critical live delivery portion. It also assists in distributing and managing rich media as it goes along a network. "That same technology now can be used for a wide set of content types, not just streaming," said Galvin, "but batch PDF files, for example." The ability to manage the network can be very granular, down to specific streams.

Galvin said that Inktomi is still partnering with OEMs, like Compaq, HP, and Dell to include Inktomi's caching products as a boxed solution.