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Sun's Schmidt pushes the push model for the Web viewing [Image]
By Jim Balderston [Image]
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 11:55 AM PT, Oct 18, 1996 [Image]
NEW YORK -- Citing the explosive growth of the World Wide Web
and networked information systems as a whole, Sun Microsystems [Image]
Inc.'s Chief Technical Officer Eric Schmidt on Friday said that
going out to find information on networks will be replaced by [Image]
having it delivered to your desktop.
[Image]
"We are moving away from the browser model," Schmidt said to a
packed audience at Netscape Communications Corp.'s Internet
Developer's Conference here. "Instead of going out and having [Image]
to find information, it will find us."
[Image]
PointCast Corp. pioneered the so-called push model with the
PointCast Network, which broadcasts customized news feeds to [Image]
users desktops, Schmidt noted. That model has been reworked by
others, including Netscape, with its InBox technology, which
allows users to select information that they want delivered
directly to their desktop from particular Internet or intranet
sites. Schmidt also spoke of the future of information
delivery, noting that information caching will grow as a
phenomena, and instead of "having a paper route, you will have
a caching route" where information is delivered to users each
evening.
Communication by satellite could play an increasing role in the
delivery of cached information, Schmidt continued, even if it
may not be a useful technology for two-way communications.
Schmidt also reminded the attendees that the Internet had a
role to play in their futures, but that the intranet was where
the action was.
"You make money on the intranet, and you make noise on the
Internet," Schmidt said. "That's the marketing part of the
plan."
The hype surrounding the Internet, intranet, Sun's Java
programming language, and the new industry surrounding these
technologies is only the beginning, Schmidt continued, adding
that the industry will grow at phenomenal rates in the future.
"We are only 5 percent into this," Schmidt said. "This is a
fundamentally different industry than others, and we are not
seeing the hype of 1995 followed by a crash in 1996."
The small percentage of companies now participating in the
Internet and intranet development space are part of a "tornado"
cutting through society, Schmidt said.
"We're catching up to something very natural," Schmidt said
about computer networks. "All of these computers should have
been networked 15 years ago."
Sun is at http://www.sun.com/.
Please direct your comments to InfoWorld Electric News Editor Dana Gardner.
Copyright © 1996 InfoWorld Publishing Company
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