Network Ensures Uniform Content Presentation

By Chuck Moozakis

"All for one and one for all" was fine for the Three Musketeers 375 years ago. But being able to deliver data in one consistent format to all users must seem as difficult to Web content producers as fighting oppression in 17th century France.

The culprit: a dizzying array of end-user devices, ranging from desktop PCs and handheld personal digital assistants to a new generation of Web-enabled cell phones. Each device brings with it another authoring protocol for tailoring Web content for delivery.

To help companies eliminate the hassles associated with authoring content for disparate devices, AlterEgo Networks Inc. last week took the wraps off its Adaptive Network.

The service, available immediately, weds Web content adaptation with content distribution over AlterEgo's nationwide managed network. The result, observers say, is a unified approach that will assure companies that information is delivered swiftly to users-regardless of the type of device they use or their location.

"When a billion wireless phones wake up in the next few years, a distributed architecture will be the only way people will be able to receive the information they need," said Gartner Group analyst Bob Egan about AlterEgo's approach. "They seem to understand how to accelerate the interaction between the application and the user."

Wireless Explosion

AlterEgo's launch comes as wireless adoption explodes. A study by the Yankee Group predicts 1 billion digital wireless phones in use worldwide by 2004, compared with 220 million phones in 1998. Internet-enabled "smart phones," meanwhile, are expected to number 204 million by 2005 vs. fewer than 10 million today.

AlterEgo's promise to bridge the gap between the tethered and untethered worlds is what led ConsumerReview.com to tap the service, according to Konrad App, ConsumerReview.com's director of wireless business.Four-year-old ConsumerReview.com operates 18 Web sites that provide product reviews and other consumer information aimed both at businesses and consumers.

With AlterEgo, App said ConsumerReview.com will be able to extend its service to wireless users without losing any of the site's information and without requiring programmers to recode content or pages for specific devices.

"The wireless world will extend our business model," App said. "We see a future in which people will be able to take their wireless devices into stores and not only get product reviews but also obtain promotional information from vendors trying to sell their products to consumers. Maybe there will be a featured pick, or an e-coupon, that a consumer will be able to use when buying the product."

Still, AlterEgo's approach isn't for everybody. Charles Schwab & Co., which last week launched its PocketBroker wireless online trading service, said it wouldn't consider AlterEgo because it's unwilling to turn over control to an outsider, said Nasos Topakas, Schwab's vice president of wireless products engineering.

"We have to make sure, though, that we retain control over how the customer experience is presented," Topakas said. "There's a danger here that our entire message won't be transmitted end-to-end."

David Downing, AlterEgo's vice president of marketing, said AlterEgo's approach ensures that clients' messages remain consistent. The company's adaptive technology, based on software developed by SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute) lets AlterEgo convert HTML content into an abstraction layer based on XML. From there, the content is adapted to wireless markup languages such as Wireless Application Protocol for delivery to untethered devices.

AlterEgo goes one step further, though, by taking that content and pumping it through its nationwide infrastructure, built upon nine data centers that mesh with private network access points administered by InterNap Network Services Corp.

Using Inktomi Corp.'s Traffic Server caching platform, content is further distributed to the edge of AlterEgo's network, thus accelerating delivery. Beyond adapting content, Adaptive Network also optimizes how content is delivered. A proprietary Bandwidth Detection Server lets AlterEgo determine what type of browser-equipped device a user has. If the server detects a low-speed connection, content is adjusted accordingly-perhaps by sending a low-resolution graphic instead of a high-resolution counterpart, or by trimming nonessential details.

AlterEgo is charging $10 per every thousand pages of adapted content served. Review, adaptation of content and publishing of transformed content is free.

Even as AlterEgo ramps up Adaptive Network, competitors are close at hand. IBM this fall is expected to release its WebSphere Everyplace Suite, a platform that will provide the link between a Web content producer and end-user devices. IBM is working with AT&T and Sprint PCS to support the service, which will also use IBM's Transcoding Publisher Web adaptation tool to convert HTML content.