Inktomi Corporation Formed by UC Berkeley Scientists to Bring Parallel Processing Power to Commercial Internet Applications

Supercomputing Engines Index Entire Contents of the Web

BERKELEY, CA -- May 20, 1996 -- A group of prominent UC Berkeley scientists and academics today announced the formation of Inktomi Corporation, a company formed to introduce supercomputing power to commercial Internet applications. Inktomi will apply its parallel-processing technology to introduce the industry's first high-performance, scalable engines that will enable fast, reliable access to the complete and most current contents of the World Wide Web. Inktomi's first products are scalable in size to match the Internet's rapid growth, and the only engines capable of indexing every word on the World Wide Web.

"Our engines are the only ones that can scale with the exponential growth of the Internet, so Inktomi will always be able to offer the whole Web -- not just a subset of information we personally deem appropriate -- to millions of users." said Dr. Eric Brewer, Inktomi's chief technology officer and co-founder. "By bringing supercomputing to the Internet, we're able to offer users the most relevant, timely and complete information, without sacrificing speed and without costly hardware."

Inktomi will pursue strategic partnerships with other industry leaders to bring its products to mainstream markets and to achieve brand recognition. The first such product, HotBot, co-developed with HotWired Ventures LLC (a subsidiary of Wired Ventures), was also announced today. (See related news release: "HotWired Introduces HotBot, Powered by Inktomi")

Unparalleled Parallel Processing

Inktomi's core parallel processing technology was developed by founders Eric Brewer and Paul Gauthier at the University of California, Berkeley. Inktomi combines groups of commodity desktop computers into a "network of workstations" with supercomputing capabilities. This power is harnessed to gather, index and sift through the massive and growing amount of content available on the Internet, including the World Wide Web, Usenet news, and other sources such as popular email mailing lists.

Inktomi's Web "crawler" retrieves the full text of millions of documents per day and uses sophisticated processing techniques to capture clues about the content of the site. For example, Inktomi's crawler recognizes different multimedia file types such as Shockwave, Java and RealAudio and allows users to search for the documents containing these files. Inktomi indexes the full text of every page and records the position of every word to allow more detailed searching and document relevance scoring.

Power

"Inktomi's unique scalable architecture provides high performance and adaptability to meet the challenge of indexing the Internet as it grows, while supporting the rising number of users," said Paul Gauthier, co-founder and vice president of research and development. "And, if we need to double our database size or accommodate more users, we can scale linearly by simply adding more workstations to the network."

Reliability and Cost-effectiveness

Because of Inktomi's revolutionary parallel architecture, its advanced Internet engines enjoy superb reliability and fault-tolerance. Even if one or several nodes crash, the remaining nodes cover the workload until the others can be restarted. By building on mass-produced components, the system achieves a superior price-performance ratio compared to competitive technologies that are forced to add expensive hardware to address the issue.

Inktomi's technology can also be applied to countless networking situations for public and private Internets around the world.

Mass Customization

In contrast to traditional media, the point-to-point nature of the World Wide Web makes it a perfect medium for the intelligent delivery of personalized content. Whereas broadcast media such as television project a single message to the entire audience, the Web medium can be used to automate the delivery of customized content. Inktomi's Audience1O technology, which has been built into the search engine, enables advertising that "markets to an audience of one." Users see ads that are more relevant and interesting, and advertisers reach their target audiences much more effectively.

By leveraging the power of Web/database integration, Audience1 also allows users to customize the functionality of the search engine. Using a simple step-by-step process, users can choose among different layouts, store favorite searches, and set default query options.

Inktomi Corporation

Pronounced "ink-to-me", the company name is derived from a mythological spider of the Plains Indians known for bringing culture to the people. Inktomi was founded in January 1996 by Eric Brewer, an assistant professor of computer science at UC Berkeley, and Paul Gauthier, a graduate student in the computer science Ph.D. program, with a desire to commercialize the highly-effective technologies developed during their research. Since the realization of their efforts, other prominent scientists from U.C. Berkeley, MIT, and Cal Tech, and alumni from Microsoft, Sybase, Digital Equipment Corporation, Pacific Bell Internet Services and Silicon Graphics have joined the company.

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Inktomi Corporation develops and markets proprietary software tools for searching, locating and managing information on the Internet, and on private Intranets. Using technology based on parallel-computing system design, Inktomi's search engine and Web crawler products deliver the speed and performance characteristic of a supercomputer while utilizing smaller, less expensive workstations. The company has also developed Audience1™ , a software package that enables real-time mass customization and highly targeted advertising on the World Wide Web.

INKTOMI CORPORATION
COMPANY BACKGROUNDER

Overview

Inktomi Corporation develops and markets proprietary software tools for searching, locating and managing information on the Internet, and on private Intranets.

Using technology based on parallel-computing system design, Inktomi's search engine and Web crawler products deliver the speed and performance characteristic of a supercomputer while utilizing smaller, less expensive workstations. The Inktomi search engine incorporates Audience1™, a software package that enables real-time mass customization and highly targeted advertising on the World Wide Web.

The Technology

The company has licensed proprietary technology based on parallel processing and Web database integration, originally developed at the University of California at Berkeley.

The Network

This technology is based on the design known as Network of Workstations, or NOW. Inktomi's network, which runs on the company's proprietary software, enables performance approaching that of a supercomputer, but at a much lower cost. In addition, the company's NOW system can be incrementally expanded by adding nodes, allowing for significant flexibility and fault tolerance, and it uses a standardized operating system, which enables short development times.

The Details

Founded and incorporated in February 1996, Inktomi has its base of operations in Berkeley, California. The company's facilities house all technical operations, as well as executive management and sales and marketing staff.

Internet Market

It is becoming increasingly difficult for content providers to make their presence known on the Internet, and for users to locate information relating to their particular interests. Tools to manage the Web's mass of distributed content have become a critical driver of the Internet's viability; currently a number of advertising-supported search engines and Internet directories have emerged to compete for the growing user base. Inktomi expects to succeed in this intensely competitive market by providing superior search and management tools that are faster and more comprehensive than rival products.

In addition, unlike conventional media, the Internet offers content providers and publishers the capability to target advertising to specific audiences and to immediately measure the popularity of specific information offerings. As the Internet has evolved and begun to take on the characteristics of a mass medium -- where advertising and other revenues are generated from viewership and use -- content providers and advertisers increasingly are looking to take advantage of these capabilities and shape their offerings for individual users. Inktomi's Audience1 software package provides this real-time "mass customization" and precise target marketing capability.

Company Mission

Inktomi is dedicated to delivering Internet and Intranet software products that can match millions of users with millions of pieces of information.

The Strategy

Through a strategy of product branding targeted at specific user groups, Inktomi will increase awareness and build a following among customers for its search engine services. To further these goals, Inktomi is partnering with companies -- such as the popular Web publisher HotWired -- that have already established a strong marketing and advertising sales presence on the Web. Inktomi's charter is to launch its search engine and establish it among "Web savvy" Internet users who can most easily appreciate the unique advantages of its design and interface. Traditionally, in the case of sophisticated computer services and products, these knowledgeable individuals have served as opinion leaders for less experienced users. Building on the resulting recognition of Inktomi as a provider of leading technology for the Internet, the company will introduce additional products based on its core technologies.

Though there are many search engines already established in the marketplace, the company plans to aggressively promote its technological lead to become the leader in providing innovative, user-friendly solutions for managing information on the Internet and on private Intranets.

The Products

The Inktomi search engine enables users to easily search vast amounts of information on the Internet, including Web sites and Usenet Newsgroups. Unique among existing search engines, its parallel processing technology is harnessed to enable the first truly scalable Web engine. These engines are built using networks of commodity workstations, which yields a superior price-performance ratio, fault tolerance, and the ability to expand by simply adding workstations to the network.

The Value

Inktomi's search engines are the only ones in existence with the capacity to index the entire Web, which is estimated to have more than 50 million retrievable documents. In addition, the company's Web "crawler," which is the automated software robot that gathers information to be stored and queried in the search engine database, is also an application of the scalable server technology and is faster than any crawler currently available. The company believes that its scalable server technology will provide a significant competitive advantage because it enables the Inktomi search engine to completely index the entire Web, and update its database frequently, making it the most comprehensive and up-to-date of any index currently available.

The Revenue

The company will generate revenue from its search engine through co-marketing arrangements with brand licensers and independent advertising firms.

Audience1™

Inktomi's Audience1 software package, which is integrated into the core of the search engine, provides real-time mass customization and precise target marketing capability. Audience1 provides scalable Web/database integration which, when combined with Inktomi's scalable engine, allows personalized mass communication to be tailored to an "audience of one."

Intranets

Inktomi is developing software tools for corporate "Intranets", exclusive networks using Internet data formats and communications protocols. These products will be ideal for organizations that need to make data such as inventory, pricing and customer information available to users inside and outside their organizations.