InformationWeek

August 18, 1997

Microsoft, Marimba Push Standar d

Auto software distribution could help cut PC costs

icrosoft and Marimba Inc. last week proposed a standard format for automatically distributing software over the Internet via push technology. The agreement is considered a significant step in the industry movement toward lowering the cost of administering PCs.

The Open Software Description spec provides a consistent format for describing a software component in a file that accompanies the component. Developers will be able to use push applications that support OSD to deliver a component and an OSD file to client machines over the Internet or intranets; an installation program on the clients will read the description and automatically inst all the components.

"This adds momentum to the notion of having zero administration PCs," says Ron Rappaport, an analyst with IT consulting firm Zona Research Inc. in Redwood City, Calif.

Customers see big potential. "The total cost of administering a distributed application is tremendous," says David Donahue, president of Bentana Technologies Inc., a company in East Hartford, Conn., that provides Java-based applications that let users administer their benefits packages on corporate intranets. "Now, companies are going to be able to distribute updates to the code in near-real time in a cost-effective manner."

Because OSD is based partly on Marimba's technology, the current version of Marimba's Castanet push application can already distribute OSD-compliant components, says David Cope, VP of marketing at Marimba, in Palo Alto, Calif. Other vendors that announced support for OSD are CyberMedia, InstallShield Software, LANovation, Lotus Development, and Netscape Communications, which has integrated Ma rimba's Castanet client into its NetCaster push client.

OSD can work with software written in any language, including C, C++, Visual Basic, Java, the Component Object Model (COM), and JavaBeans. It's based on the Extensible Markup Language (XML), a spec that defines customized markup languages for use on the Web.

Back to News in Review