C&W signs push deal with Backweb

Cable & Wireless (C&W) has struck a deal with push technology pioneer Backweb Technology to resell software to its top global accounts.

As part of a worldwide agreement, C&W will first rollout Backweb's Sales Accelerator software to its key account managers to push time-sensitive, business-critical information, such as price and market updates and competitor information, over the corporate intranet.

The company then plans to resell the software to its top global customers, including multinational organisations in finance, IT, logistics, energy, media and pharmaceutical sectors.

C&W follows Cisco and BT in the UK to use Backweb's Polite Push technology to send business-critical information over the intranet to staff and clients. Polite Push uses idle bandwidth to deliver information in any size or format, including audio, video, graphics and HTML. Unlike the push technology of the past which was criticised for disrupting the user and clogging the network, even large files can be delivered without impacting system or network performance.

"Its like an internet FedEx," said Jean-Francois Guymar, Backweb's European chief executive. "Backweb is the tool that collects content, delivers it in a polite and direct way to the customer, and then confirms when it was received and that it was actually read."

John Cobb, director of customer development for C&W's global markets, said: "It is very difficult to get all information out to people. We have an intranet and only five per cent or so is business-critical and we need to push that out to account managers."

Cobb is aware of push technology's tainted reputation. "Push can get in the way if you're not careful. But for our account managers who are travelling users with dial-up links polite push is ideal as it only uses spare bandwidth and can flag things up to get the right information to the right people," he said.

While Backweb's contemporaries such as Pointcast and Marimba have either been bought up or have left push behind, the company is confident that push technology is more relevant today than ever as the web encourages more companies to conduct business globally. "Push died and now is back," said Guymar.