By signing up the AltaVista Search Service as a customer, Marimba Inc has scored another win for its application distribution and management (ADM) marketing story (CI No 3,438). In future Digital’s pioneering search engine, now owned by Compaq Computer Corp, will distribute its AltaVista Discovery search tools via Marimba’s Castanet transmitter. Originally developed to broadcast content channels, Castanet has been re-engineered as an efficient way of upgrading software over the network – a kind of server-initiated file transfer protocol on crack. Marimba says Castanet is most effective at broadcasting incremental upgrades to a particular application, keeping network traffic to a minimum by redistributing only changes to the code.
