Polese pushes push technology

The lights were on Kim Polese at Web Design & Development ’97 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco last week. The president and CEO of Marimba Inc. held a press conference February 24 to discuss strategic partnerships, and the next day gave a keynote on Internet applications for the next millennium. Both events were nicely peopled.

Do touch that channel!

At the press conference, Polese announced strategic partnerships between Marimba and an impressive number of companies — over 50 — ranging from Internet technology vendors and corporate customers to media companies and publishers. Representatives of 14 partner companies at the briefing described how they plan to use Marimba’s products in their businesses. These were Bud Tribble, VP and chief architect of Java Systems at Sun Microsystems; Claude Leglise, VP and director of Developer Relations at Intel; Pat Cronin, director of Worldwide Solution Providers at IBM; Keith McCall of the Internet Application Division at Lotus; Shigeru Sawaragi, general manager of Itochu/CTC; Kouichi Terashima, executive managing director at Hitachi; Shoji Miyamoto, senior manager of the Network Division at Hitachi; Richard Crone, VP and GM at CyberCash; Ed SooHoo, director of Technology Partners, CyberCash; Vernon Keenan, senior manager of business development at Oracle; Jens Christensen of Visigenic; Jon Harrison of MECA Software; Andrew Schneider, director of Interactive Marketing at Sony; Joan Blake of Mapquest; and Ron Conway, director of Strategic Alliances at CBT Systems.

A few samples of companies’ plans to use Marimba technologies: CBT Systems announced it will provide training courses on both Castanet and Bongo, along with its Java language training. With Marimba, Intel, Macromedia, and PBS will work together on a technology called the “infinite CD” for PBS. The infinite CD will leverage Castanet’s continual updating capability and the storage capacity of CDs to deliver information to users’ desktops through PBS Online. IBM will use Castanet as the means to deploy information to the 18,000 members of its Solutions Developer Program — in particular getting Java applications out there.

Announcements at the press briefing also included a worldwide distribution plan, which is being kicked off with partnerships with two Japanese companies: Hitachi and Itochu; and the Marimba Certified Consultant Program, which comprises Castanet channel development certification and training.

Nirvana not nervosa: A new Net technology takes off

Polese continued her Castanet evangelism in a keynote speech before a crowd of about 500 Web Design & Development ’97 attendees. Calling her talk “Nirvana on the Net” (a change in title from the more arid “Internet Applications for the Next Millennium” listed in the conference brochure), Polese started with a discourse on the socio-economic factors that have led to the introduction of network computing.

Polese then went on to explain push technology to the masses, using the phrase “self-healing NetApps” (network applications) for the audio, video, software, data that, through Castanet channels, can update themselves on users’ desktops. Money-making models new to the Net were described for the members of the audience to consider: pay per view, pay per feature, and subscription pricing.

Tune in for the specs

During the Q&A session, Polese shared a few glimpses into the future: Within the next two quarters Marimba will support non-Java applications. The tuner specs will be sent to a standards body; An API will be sent to the W3C this spring. According to an official at Marimba, “Castanet will support native-code channels sometime in 1997. We aren’t ready to announce a date. Castanet 1.0 doesn’t support native-code channels today because of the security risk native code poses to customers. When we believe we have a strong security solution, we will release native-code support.”