Technology developed for the internet games industry could spell doom for application service provider (ASP) server farms.

Israeli-based startup Exent has developed a technology that allows games to be downloaded from an ASP and run remotely using the processor on the user's hard drive.

Exent marketing vice president Avi Horwitz believes that the technology, which has been backed by Microsoft, now has applications for enterprises.

"ASPs have to use a thin client model and this means they have to use server farms, which have one server for every 100 users. But our system uses thick clients, which means it is possible to increase that ratio tenfold and have one server for every 1000 users," he said.

Horwitz claims that this would make expensive server farms a thing of the past and mean that network managers could use ASPs with their existing infrastructure.

Exent's system takes CD software and runs it using a virtual CD drive, caching a small amount on the user's hard drive. It does not install it fully onto the user's machine, although it runs normally.

"We have managed to speed up the connection between the ASP and the user with compression and caching and by reducing bandwidth pressures," he said.

Horwitz rejected downloading an ASP version of Office as uneconomic for a network manager to set up. However, where Exent technology is useful is in providing a menu of software that is not used as often.

"Software such as Paintshop, which is used only once or twice a week, will not have to be placed on every machine. Currently, a lot of networks have to put the software all over the network and this is extremely expensive," he said.

First published in Network News