Hello Retired Eagle One,
You asked a couple of good questions, and Steve seemed to address them ... I was going to offer one other analogy that might help the understanding of "caching" ...
You asked:
> Is NOVL caching going to be the big money maker for NOVL this year
> or something else?
And Steve had, as part of his reply:
> Caching is a different thing. Caching on the web makes everything
> go faster, scales the web, because it moves commonly used data
> closer to the end user. Its exactly the same idea as the various
> levels of cache inside your computer. You have cache on the cpu,
> second level close to the processor chip, third level in ram,
> fourth level perhaps on a disk cache, and finally persistent store
> on the disk.
Another way to look at this is a much higher level. (Something that I try to do every now and then ... ;-)
If you look at the Internet as a massive, global communications system, then it should become obvious that many of the problems that exist in other communications systems must also exist in the Internet ... and be dealt with.
In the "TV" world, programming is created by various people and production companies. This is then sent to the networks, who beam the content out via satellites (or high-speed fiber) to all of the regional broadcasters, who then send out the radio signals locally to our TVs. Even cable TV is almost always picking up the satellite feeds at a local or regional "head end" and then sent over the cable to our homes.
But you would never really see a production house create a program, and then attempt to broadcast from their building to the entire U.S. or world ... it becomes a problem of scale ... you would need a massively powerful transmitter, and might even microwave to death your local audience. This issue of scale is what Steve was referring to.
If I take this to the Internet world. Currently we are seeing various performance problems (problems of scale) as more and more people try to access content on the Internet. This is because often the producer tries to "transmit to the world" by setting up a web server on a limited Internet connection. Either the web server or the Internet connection soon become swamped by the number of requests and delays occur.
So the "first step" in Internet evolution was for companies like Exodus Communications (and others) to set up big data centers, with huge web servers and huge Internet connections. Anyone can now "rent" space on one of these "huge transmitters" of Internet content. This is ok, but still has delays because so much of the network between you and them is out of the control of even Exodus ...
So the "next step" has been the creation of large distribution networks of servers, which are spread throughout the Internet. Companies like Akamai, SandPiper, RBN, and InterVU are all part of this revolution. What they are doing is setting up the "regional broadcasters" throughout the Internet, so that consumers access the content via the "closest" source.
Caches are a very good solution for creating these distribution networks. They are a server which is optimized to "cache" or store a copy of recently accessed content ... web pages, pictures, audio, and now even video. Think of it as your local BlockBuster Video store ... it's a place to get a copy of a movie near by, with out having to get the movie from the studio directly!
I refer to this whole process as "Object Routing" ... it is the process of routing objects (web pages, pictures, audio, video, Java applets, etc.) through the infrastructure of the Internet.
The other core place that a cache comes in handy, is in front of any web server. Caches can help to spread the requests for web pages across numerous caches, instead of a single server.
Novell has unparalleled price/performance with their ICS and BorderManager products. There is no other cache that is able to provide the raw horsepower to move data in the Internet. They have also signed up numerous OEMs who are now pushing their hardware products with Novell's ICS software.
I believe that as the recognition of object routing and these distribution networks increases, the sales opportunity for caches will equal or exceed the market that Cisco enjoys today for "packet routers" ... so it's going to be big ... ;-)
Hope this helps ... I like to try and think of better ways to explain things for presentations that I do ... let me know if it helped or not ...
Thanks!
Scott C. Lemon |
