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New Research Company Focusing On Internet Performance
Optimization
New Research Services From
Internet Research Group Will
Detail Performance Optimization
Market Growth, Technology, Business Models, Vendors, and Strategies
Los Altos, Calif., September 25th, 2001
– Internet Research Group (IRG) today unveiled its plans to focus on
Internet performance optimization. Over the next five years the Internet
will transform the world we live in, providing diverse interconnection
between enterprises, and with individuals. Improvements in the performance,
cost-efficiency and robustness of the Internet will be a key enabling factor
in catalyzing this revolution. IRG’s first research and strategy service
will focus on the innovative ventures in this arena, and the associated
business model and technology issues. Subsequently, the company plans
additional services in the storage, application and messaging areas.
A few years ago, the magic of the Internet
led to tolerance of long access delays ("the World-Wide Wait"). In the
not-so-distant future, delays of more than a second will be considered
unacceptable for most applications. The high-performance Internet won’t be
the result of faster optical data communication and bigger routers. Instead,
it will come through innovative system and network engineering that exploits
the best of what the Internet offers while avoiding pitfalls. "The Internet
as we know it today is the best of all worlds and the worst of all worlds,"
said Peter Christy, principal and co-founder of Internet Research Group.
"Compared to having nothing, the Internet is a miracle but compared to
reasonable expectations for performance, robustness, scalability or
cost/efficiency the Internet is a severe disappointment. The requirements
for future Internet-connected systems aren’t that mysterious – PC like
interactive performance, robust scalability, broadcast network
cost-efficiency. A better Internet will breed many and varied new, killer
applications. Clever performance optimization of the infrastructure enables
them. That’s our exciting beat!"
While 2001 is proving to be a time of
decreased sales and profits for most of the companies in the computing and
networking arenas, one thing is clear – performance of today’s Internet is
much worse than the sub-second response times that became the norm in the
transaction networks of the 80’s and 90’s. "In looking to increase demand,
technology companies don’t have far to go" said John Katsaros, co-founder of
Internet Research Group. "Speeding up their customers’ networks will be on top of
the list and will drive the demand for the new and innovative applications
that will re-energize high technology. Today, everyone knows that
performance is important but few are comfortable quantifying the business
value of better performance. Our goal is to make the business value of
performance much more clear."
"The earlier work on caching and content
delivery that John and Peter did as the Internet Research Group played an
important part in the definition and evolution of those markets" said
Michael Ruffolo, Akamai Executive Vice President. "We’re delighted to see
them focusing again on these infrastructure issues."
Formed by John Katsaros and Peter Christy,
Internet Research Group will focus on technology and business strategies that
improve performance of Internet applications. John and Peter have both been
active participants in the computer and communications business for over 30
years. Both were educated as engineers. John has spent his career in
high-tech sales and marketing; Peter in product development and strategy.
Their collaboration began in 1997. By leveraging the experience and outlook
of the founders, IRG is as much a strategy consultancy, focused on this
specific industry, as it is a market research firm.
The IRG Story
In 1993 John formed what became the
Internet Research Group, a consulting practice focused on assisting Internet
ventures. In 1997, Peter joined and they collectively produced the first
comprehensive, multi-client study of the caching market. John and Peter
followed this work with a study of "load balancing" and coined the term
"Internet Traffic Management" to capture a broader view of the potential. In
1999 Internet Research Group produced the early, definitive report on
content delivery and distribution (CDN’s).
Internet
Research Group builds on what Internet
Research Group had done (Internet Research Group was sold to Jupiter
Research in early 2000).
About Internet
Research Group’s Principals
John Katsaros is
the former president of Silicon Valley-based Internet Research Group, the
leading Internet market research and consulting company focused exclusively
on helping Internet-related companies to gain market share. In March of
2000, Internet Research Group was acquired by Jupiter Communications, the
worldwide authority on Internet commerce. Internet Research Group and
Jupiter have provided essential strategic consulting for dozens of high tech
companies, including IBM, Lotus, Cisco, Oracle, Sun, and Hewlett Packard as
well as some of the Valley’s brightest venture-backed startups. John has
more than 25 years’ experience in senior level sales, marketing, product
development and business planning positions in a variety of environments
ranging from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups. He is also the author of
Selling High Tech (McGraw Hill; 1994), and was a contributing author to
Tricks of the Internet Gurus (Howard Sams, 1996). He is a frequent speaker
at Internet conferences and has written many articles on Internet electronic
commerce. John is called on by industry and national media for commentary
about Internet related events and has appeared as the Internet industry
expert on CNBC and CNS.
Peter Christy
has been involved with the computer and communications industries since the
late ‘60’s. Educated as an undergraduate at Harvard, and graduate school at
Berkeley, Peter started as a system programmer building operating systems at
CSC. Next was an exploration of medical information systems at UCSF, and
then a decade at DEC in the heyday period of 1975-1985, starting at
Technical Staff to the VP of Software Engineering, and ending in the middle
of VLSI systems, including work with DECNet from the very beginning. Peter
was briefly at HP, serving as manager of network architecture, ran
engineering for IBM/Rolm PhoneMail operations, and then was founder and VP
of Software Engineering for MasPar Computers, building mid-range, highly
parallel computers in the late 1980’s. That was followed by business
development for Sun’s object oriented Spring operating system, and then
running much of Apple’s developer tools efforts, including program
responsibilities for Apple’s involvement with IBM and Novell on OpenDoc.
Peter learned the analysis business from Michael Slater, running the small
Ziff-Davis operation that Michael had started around microprocessors,
publishing the Microprocessor Report and convening the Microprocessor Forum
All this experience Is, remarkably, actually brought to bear in the current
IRG activities.
About Internet
Research Group
Internet
Research Group provides marketing
and strategy research reports and consulting services, specializing in areas
related to Internet infrastructure. IRG offerings combine the
formidable and unique experience and perspective of the two principals: John
Katsaros and Peter Christy. IRG’s mission is to help major Internet
technology vendors and key startups make faster and better decisions about
their product, market entry, and market development strategies. IRG provides
technical product and market analyses, develops authoritative reports on
specific markets, and creates white papers and other information products.
IRG’s consulting practice helps companies develop successful market entry
and development strategies for new products in early adopter markets.
Editor’s note: Peter Christy and
John Katsaros are always available to provide quotes or references for
articles related to Internet acceleration, content delivery and
distribution, caching, or Internet traffic management. For further
information, contact:
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