Epsylon Technologies' vision of Internet 3

Philosophy

Software

Strategy

 

Epsylon Technologies' vision of Internet 3

Trends

The influence of the Internet on our life has become more and more visible, now that Internet technologies are an integral part of the technological infrastructure of society.

The needs of information consumers facilitate the creation of new markets for software technology vendors. One of these new markets, for example, is a Web application servers market that has appeared recently and is increasing very fast. This market demonstrates a need in the ability to access to remote data sources, where data is generated by an intellectual application. The market of thin clients and servers for them is also an example of the demand for such services. Besides these two examples, there are many application areas for technologies providing remote access to data and applications.

The demand for such technologies is determined by some economical trends - more and more large enterprises feel need (and benefit!) from using the Internet as a part of the enterprise information environment, more and more enterprises use the Internet as a technological basis for various services, and more and more people use the Internet in everyday life. As far as the Internet has become mass and wide spread, initiative companies have a chance to establish businesses based on providing large corporations, small enterprises and home users with new Internet services

Such needs and trends are forming a demand for new powerful Internet technologies.

Concept

In 1996 Epsylon Technologies (ET) created the concept of new the technological basis of the Internet. The main points of this concept are

• universal telecommunications monitor - an operation environment independent of Internet protocols and intended to perform operations required for interconnections between remote applications;
• object surface - way to represent interactions between distributed applications as operations over a certain number of objects;
• protocol parsers - drivers for the telecommunications monitor servicing application protocols;
• multi-user applications - programs operating as a mass services systems in conditions, when loads are unpredictable and number of users is changing every moment;
• intellectual directory - this feature provide users with various opportunities for navigation in the Internet space, consisting of the intellectual applications.

The underlying technologies of this concept have the name "BEAST-Taxxi".

As a result of the implementation of this concept ET has the ability to construct software products both for existing market sectors - Web servers, Web application servers, mail servers as well as for appearing markets related to the Internet - geoinformation servers, multi-user systems with ultra thin clients, systems with weak clients (Car PC, Web TV, set boxes, game stations etc.).

Customers

Customers of the Internet technologies can be divided into three parts, having different needs and priorities for the technologies:

1. end user of information resources;
2. service provider;
3. developer of new services.

End user (1) doesn't evaluate a technology as is. He deals with the effects and results of the application of the technology and from this point of view he is not a direct consumer of the technology. The typical user of this category is conservative, doesn't want to work with sophisticated interfaces and always prefers to work with a system requiring minimal skills and customization of any settings. So, the end user likes known software products with known interfaces, and this fact makes him an ideal consumer of the ultra thin client technology, where all settings and services are centralized at the server side.

Service provider (2) uses Internet related software as a technological base of his business. The main requirements of this consumer category are low costs for acquisition, support and maintenance of the basic software, high reliability of this software, scalability, compatibility with other technologies and legacy systems, ease-of-use administration, stability with loads and changing of number of users, a significant potential in the performance of the basic software and data security.

New services developer (3) presents a number of requirements for software tools. The developer is interested in RAD (Rapid Application Development) tools, because they let him implement his tasks easy and rapidly. He is interested in support of technologies that he has used. The basic development technology must have no principal restrictions on the support of new technologies, that can appear, i.e. the technologies for the service developers must be open and scalable. A large group of companies producing devices designed for access to the Internet - WebTV, set boxes, car PC etc. - can be classified from this point of view as the third customer category. Such companies are interested in development of technologies that can provide their devices with new capabilities and thereby make them more competitive.

ET considered all above mentioned requirements in its developments. As a result the current software product line has been released and a technology base for a principally new market - a market for providing customers with distributed intellectual dynamic content of the Internet - has been formed.

More about the trends

Worldwide trends in information technologies development are development of technologies for the global networked world, the world, where weak and powerful computing devices operate in interconnected, interrelated communication space. These trends can be divided into two groups:

as to the aspect of improving of the functional characteristics of technologies:

• client-server technologies are developing with multi-tier (N-tier) architectures;
• rapid application development (RAD) tools are developed to support not only two-tier, but also multi-tier architectures;
• weak client devices with zero administration (thin and ultra thin clients) begin play a more significant role because this minimizes TCO (Total Cost of Ownership);
• centralized multi-server administrating becomes more important;
• technologies enabling navigation in the Internet as in a common globally data catalogue becomes important;
• application server technology pretends to be a basic technology of the global networked world;
• requirements to reliability, scalability and performance of application servers become higher;
• technologies for information system security - secure access, traffic encryption, trusted technologies, VPN (Virtual Private Network) technologies - become very popular;
• as a role of the global net is growing, new vision of operation environment functionality is formed both from developer's and from user's points of view.

as to the aspect of implementation of users needs:

• technologies providing instant communication between people in the global net are being developed;
• verge between work in a local enterprise network and private work in the global net is wiped; technologies for enterprise operations and technologies for communications in the private life become the same;
• transition of existing application software from personal to network versions (word processor -> enterprise document storage, application for static data analysis -> multi-user analytical service, GIS (GeoInformation System) application -> multi-user GIS etc.)

As in the early stages of the photographic technology development, the largest part of the Internet is the large storage of hypertext documents. And as in the early stages of the photographic technology development, now specialists see, that "animation" by intellectual capabilities could be a significant step and they make the first, awkward attempts to animate the Internet content (Web application servers, instant communicators, Java, ActiveX etc.).

And as the first daguerreotypes were replaced with cinema technologies, the Internet inevitably will absorb technologies for filling of the Web with dynamic intellectual content. A company, which will present an universally acceptable, mass and reliable technology for the generation and support of the dynamic intellectual Internet content, will find a real treasure.

Internet 3 and ET Position in the World Technology Development Process

Actually the Internet of the first generation - Internet 1 - must be a base for creation of a new mass market, where technologies for the dynamic intellectual content are necessary. The term "Internet 2" is related to methods for physical increasing of the Web bandwidth through new high speed connection lines and new data transmission technologies. We feel, it's time to discuss a new term and a new market - Internet 3 - it is a world wide web, where dynamic intellectual data sources, instant communications and peer-to-peer connections are the key features.

From Epsylon Technologies' point of view

In our opinion, technologies for application servers, thin clients, thin servers, technologies for adding global network capabilities to desktop applications, technologies for peer-to-peer and instant communications can be integrated in the framework of a common technology base.

The emphasis in ET's developments was on a high performance multi-platform telecommunication monitor, intended to be a base of the entire product line. The telemonitor was created in 1996 and is included in the most part of ET's products. Its main characteristics are high performance, good load capability, compatibility with other technologies and scalability. The size of the telemonitor executable codes is quite small, therefore it is deployable both on palmtop computers as well as on mainframes.

The telemonitor technology is included in:

• server side software - as basic application server;
• client side software - as a reliable and fast engine for network communications.

Then the technology base (telemonitor) was developed, ET obtained the ability to release global network software for various application areas. To save time and money for the development process, the base technology was complemented with the technology for rapid visual component programming. The corresponding component libraries for popular programming environments of the third companies were developed for this purpose. To date there is a two-year history of application of these approaches in projects for enterprises and for the Internet.

The above mentioned BEAST-Taxxi technologies let ET to compete with the leading software technologies vendors in the following directions:

• minimization of time and programmers' work for the creation of new software for arising markets - it provides marketing flexibility and competitiveness;
• many application areas in various market sectors with a common programming approaches;
• BEAST-Taxxi products architecture ensures scalability, high performance and load capability;
• maximal openness of the technology and compatibility with legacy systems;
• compatibility with third parties software;
• due to BEAST-Taxxi technology principles all ET's software products has unique characteristics.

Main concepts of BEAST-Taxxi technologies:

• universal (independent of protocols) telecommunications monitor;
• object surface;
• protocol parsers;
• multi-user applications;
• intellectual directory.

These concepts provide compatibility with third technologies with minimal developer efforts.

More about the technologies

The telemonitor (TM)- universal, high performance, independent of protocols feature - is the base for all ET's products. It has its own internal API, supports transactions, toggles data flows between tasks and users and control task performance. TM code is written in C and therefore it is independent of platforms. There are telemonitor versions for Windows 95, 98, NT, Linux, AIX and Solaris. Versions for Windows CE (palmtop) as well as for OS390 (mainframe) are also realizable.

The telemonitor toggles data flow from clients to tasks and back and, when required, starts single- or multi-user applications. The applications, which are controlled by the telemonitor, receive message and data flows from it. To operate with Internet protocols such as HTTP, SMTP, FTP, IIOP and any others, parsers of the according protocols must be installed into the telemonitor. Data, which incomes to the telemonitor, passes through a parser and then is sent to corresponding task, which processes it. In this model a task may initiate a request to another task. Every task can operate with various protocols and a number of users.

The input/output thread of each task is represented as a projection onto the "object surface", therefore a developer of server side applications can forget about details of network interaction implementation. In this model interaction between client and server side applications is described through visual and non-visual controls, i.e. objects, whose properties and methods encapsulate features of certain protocol, client application and programming environment. This approach resembles interface approaches of CORBA and DCOM, but it is different, because it enables application of both already existing application protocols (DCOM and IIOP) as well as protocols, which are not intended for object interconnections (HTTP, SMTP, POP3 and IMAP4).

So, this architecture provides the compatibility and scalability of BEAST-Taxxi series products and enables rapid creation of new products by their "assembling" from "technology blocks".

Drawing 1

An object surface of a server side application is projected onto an object surface of client side application. Any application protocol can be selected for the data transmission. Type of object surface depends on the protocol used.

Drawing 2

The picture shows interaction of BEAST-Taxxi architecture elements in a centralized system. TM is to start, run and terminate applications. The applications interact with TM through Baikonur Native API - a high speed application bus. Client requests is recognized by parsers and commuted by TM to the corresponding tasks. Input/output threads are projected onto according object surfaces. Any database of any software can be used as a data source for applications, if it is connected by a special link or API.

The below pictures explains how to construct server products for the Internet in this architecture.

Drawing 3

Products developed in BEAST-Taxxi architecture are pictured. The third picture shows client application called Taxxi Communicator that includes TM. As far as all products include TM, creation of a decentralized distributed information system is also possible.

Drawing 4

TMs can operate in mode of simultaneous asynchronous requests from applications to numerous nodes in a system, therefore hierarchical processing centers can be developed with BEAST-Taxxi technology as shown in drawing 5.

Drawing 5

The above picture shows architecture for using the usual desktop applications as client browsers in an Internet system. TM and object surface concepts enable the use of popular programs as Java Machine, MS Office, Visio, GIS framework etc. as client communication applications.

The next important concept - intellectual directory - is intended to simplify navigation in the global net including numerous sources of intellectual dynamic content. This concept is a logical consequence of the object surface concept. In this case a remote multi user application projects its object surface onto a window, which is represented in the user desktop as a directory. This approach is very flexible - there is no restrictions on the logic of the application that represents the directory information to the user. Due to such flexibility many various scenarios of user operations with the directory information can be implemented. The intellectual directory is the latest basic concept of ET and it is implemented only in the newest products.

Drawing 6. Object surface and intellectual directory

Drawing 7. Single- and multi-protocol remote directory applications

Conclusion

Due to BEAST-Taxxi technologies, we now have the ability to form a new market - Internet 3 - a world wide web with the intellectual dynamic content, acceptable for all enterprises and users of the current Internet. As movies and TV technologies come after daguerreotypes, the current Internet technologies will be replaced with technologies supporting the intellectual dynamic content. In the case of movies, emergence of the technologies supporting the dynamic content has led to the appearance of numerous new businesses, whose value has exceeded all expectations. ET is on the start of the analogues technology revolution in Internet.