Cable & Wireless USA has become the latest company to license Inktomi Inc’s Traffic Server caching software. Cable & Wireless will use it as the basis for its so-called internet shock absorber (ISA) web content distribution and management services that it is planning to roll out to its web hosting customers. C&W is vague about exactly what ISA will entail. But Paul de Luca, general manager of value-added services marketing suggests that the first thing to look for will be an event-based service that will enable firms that launch products over the web, for example, to get enough bandwidth for a short period of time, rather than buying such capacity permanently. However, says de Luca, the aim eventually is to be able to offer such service permanently and to be able configure it on the fly. He says a couple of C&W customers in the US are ready to deploy the technology in a beta test within two to three months, but there is not timetable for a roll-out just yet, at least not one the company wants to talk about, but it will be deployed on all the nodes C&W owns, including the ones it got from its acquisition of MCI’s internet business last year.
