Ipedo Launches Product Line With Directory Cache Product

After two-and-a-half months of beta testing, Ipedo this week unveiled its first product: Ipedo Directory Cache. Ipedo Directory Cache is the first-ever dynamic LDAP directory cache and the first of several dynamic content delivery products Ipedo is in the process of developing.

The push behind Ipedo Directory Cache is the company’s belief that while Web caching software and services work well for static HTML pages and images, they do not benefit dynamically changing Web applications or personalized content. While improving the delivery of static content from the network edge can accelerate Web page delivery, Web caching does not help the performance of back-end tiers (e.g., database server or application servers).

After two-and-a-half months of beta testing, Ipedo this week unveiled its first product: Ipedo Directory Cache. Ipedo Directory Cache is the first-ever dynamic LDAP directory cache and the first of several dynamic content delivery products Ipedo is in the process of developing.

However, by storing frequently accessed data in a directory cache that is in front of a directory server, Ipedo found that many performance bottlenecks could be alleviated, Tim Matthews, Ipedo president and co-founder told ServerWatch.

Ipedo used its Active Edge caching technology to develop its directory caching product. Active Edge builds on the basic ideas of Web caching and adds more sophisticated capabilities to improve overall content delivery by staging dynamic data at the database, application server, Web server, and cache tiers. Active caching brings “hot” data forward in the application tiers. It can also handle translating to the desired output format or meta format in advance to remove the format processing burden from the application server or Web server.

Ipedo Directory Cache works with any LDAP v3 directory server, including those from iPlanet, Novell, and IBM. It installs quickly with no disruption to back-end servers. Multiple caches accessing a single master directory can store redundant sets of information for high availability, or the data can be split up among the multiple caches to boost performance.

The product is being targeted to portals, large enterprises, and trading hubs, Matthews said.

Ipedo Directory Cache will be particularly useful for enterprises with LDAP servers that have peer-level caching directories. These servers are the “unsung workhorse” for Web and wireless applications, Matthews noted. Increased performance from Ipedo Directory Cache will be most noticed by sites that have high traffic and a great amount of personalization features.

Ipedo also supports Directory Services Markup Language (DSML), the latest XML interface to directories.

The Ipedo Directory Cache is available for Windows NT, Windows 2000, Sun Solaris, and Red Hat Linux. It is licensed on a per-server basis starting at $25,000. On a per-user basis, this translates into about 500,000 users per GB.

The next product Ipedo is planning to release is a content cache. The product is scheduled for release in mid-April, Matthews said. Like the directory cache product, Ipedo hopes its content cache product will accelerate Internet and wireless applications for users.

Ipedo is a privately held company founded last June with the backing of several Silicon Valley angel investors.

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