Spyglass Inc, until Microsoft Corp’s revamped Internet strategy the most potent competitor to fellow Web high-flier Netscape Communications Corp, has inked what it claims is a multimillion dollar licensing agreement with Unix Common Desktop Environment developer TriTeal Corp for the first supported commercial version of Spyglass’s Internet technology. Spyglass also announced a software development kit for its Web server which, thanks to a revamped HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol engine, is claimed to be three to 10 times faster than its competitors. The deal, said to be worth around $2m, calls for TriTeal to use the technology in its $200 TEDserver enterprise offering. It has already licensed Spyglass for its flagship Common Desktop implementation, the TED desktop, and also has plans to use it in the TEDvision Internet browser, according to the company. TriTeal plans to add Web-aware applications such as calendars, information managers and a customer database to the browser and server, which will be specifically targeted at its installed base in Fortune 1000 companies seeking to create an Intranet. The package will come in much cheaper than chief competitor Netscape, which costs $1,300. Besides the licensing announcement, Spyglass said it will release a software development kit for its Web Server – to the tune of $75,000. Spyglass says it has increased its HTTP engine performance in three areas: throughput, or data transfer rate; latency, or the amount of waiting time for connection and connect rate and the number of users that can be accessing the server at any given second. These are helped by what Spyglass calls a keep alive function, which downloads all information as one connection, rather than connecting and disconnecting for each link as other Web servers do. The company benchmarked its product using Silicon Graphics Inc’s WebStone against five Web servers and claims it outperformed each by three to 10 times. While Spyglass said it beat Netscape Communications Corp by at least that margin, Netscape has a licensing agreement prohibiting details of the benchmark. The server was benchmarked at 210 users, but Spyglass claims that it could enable far more users to connect simultaneously. Spyglass is offering a free Web server for downloading on its home site, but is available only on Unix systems, for the moment. Spyglass last week reported first quarter net of $722,000, on turnover of $3.8m.
