New data quality of service allows content to be tiered based on importance

    New Introspector tool provides real-time monitoring of data

    New Windows Phone 7 support & continued development for mobile devices

London December 8, 2011 – Push Technology, the last mile Internet communications specialist, announces the availability of Diffusion 4.0, a major new release of its Internet communications platform which delivers smart latency ‘live’ content across the Internet in a secure, intelligent and efficient way to any net connected device.

A middleware fabric for real-time communications at and over the Internet edge, the Java-based Diffusion platform meets the needs of all organisations wishing to make the Internet a rich and live experience where the right data is available for the right user at the right time irrespective of application, device, type of browser, geography or connection speed.

Making the Internet real-time is gaining considerable momentum given the growth in bandwidth capacity, explosion in popularity of Internet enabled mobile devices[1], and new web technologies such as HTML5. Real-time data is critical in a whole range of markets such as financial e-trading platforms, online in-play betting, multi-player Internet-based gaming, online media and advertising.

Diffusion 4.0 increases data throughput performance, adds data quality of service capability, new real-time monitoring, while improving robustness and resilience by including auto load balancing and failover technologies. Designed to make client and server-side implementations easier, the new version also offers Windows Phone 7 capability, with security enhanced as SSL is supported across all mobile devices.

Able to handle millions of concurrent user connections, Diffusion delivers smart and low latency, bi-directional content to and from web sites to net connected devices including desktops, smartphones, Internet TVs, multi media tablets, iPads and so on.

Content is only pushed to users when it changes - using a ‘publish/subscribe’ model - which turns the traditional ‘request/response’ web models of today on their head.  This means packet sizes are kept low, speeds increased, bandwidth maximised and scaling is easy which avoids the complexity, and huge infrastructure investment required to handle bi-directional, volatile information flows when vast numbers of users all want to access ‘live’ content at the same time.

Ultimately it means that interactions between web sites and devices become super fast and enable communications to become seamless and conversational in manner.

Key new enhancements
Darren Hudson, Push Technology’s chief technology officer, says, “Performance is key and is a characteristic of every new release. Diffusion 4.0 is no exception with performance improved capitalising on our engineering team’s extensive distributed computing background and expertise.”

Client connection technology has been enhanced across all 15 of Diffusion’s APIs[2] which has improved the robustness and resilience of the platform.  Auto client failover, clustering and load balancing features have been added so that client devices can get data from alternative servers located at different data centres should there be connection failure.

Internet data quality of service
Various data delivery features are now available which improve the user experience by allowing content providers to tier data delivery based on the importance of the information.  Key features are:

    Data Quality of Service – given finite bandwidth capacity, administrators can set, for example, financial pricing information to take priority over news so users get this critical data first.  Data can be prioritised low, normal and high;

    Data lifecycle – data queued can be ‘promoted’ higher based on a certain time frame set or deleted;

    Data fragmentation – larger non-urgent messages can be split and sent in pulses across a network when important data – like pricing - is not being sent and there are gaps in transmission available.   This ensures the best of both worlds – critical data taking priority first but other information sent in a timely fashion.

Introspector real-time monitoring and management
The new release has improved monitoring capabilities so system administrators can see data traffic flows in real-time, thereby significantly improving management and auditing of the platform.

Based on Eclipse open source software, the new Introspector tool provides customers a holistic view of Diffusion, the network and data running through it.  Systems operators can see data feeds in and out of Diffusion, ensure they are working, view information sent to clients (based on topics), check status of connected devices, which messages are queued and those sent, as well as providing a range of systems data like CPU and memory usage, along with disc space availability.

Hudson explains, “Diffusion works by sending topic-based information to client devices which have subscribed to it. Obviously the platform has to receive data in, for it then to push it out to users.  Introspector allows you to burrow into your data models and topics to see whether data is flowing in and out, and act accordingly if there are any issues.”

Broader mobile support, security and simplified development
Diffusion 4.0 extends support for making real-time data available on the burgeoning number of new mobile devices as they come to market. The new release offers:

    Windows Phone 7 support,

    Added SSL support across all mobile devices to improve security;

    Improved API consistency across all mobile operating systems including Android, Blackberry, iOS, Java ME, and Windows.  This means that developers creating mobile applications to connect to Diffusion have a standardised API across multiple platforms so once one is learnt, it is then easy to use all others.  This simplifies and makes installations easier and capitalises on Diffusion’s ability to build server side solutions once and deploy on any net connected platform: desktop, mobile and so on.

Sean Bowen, Push Technology’s, chief executive officer, says, “With Diffusion 4.0, we’ve listened carefully to what our customers want and assessed future market developments while factoring the code to enhance performance.  The new release is a compelling and powerful solution for third party content providers or organisations wishing to embrace the real-time Internet opportunity.”

[1] In 2011, smartphones shipments are set to grow 55% year on year according to IDC, with media tablet sales booming, up over 261% according to Gartner data.

[2] Diffusion supports Flash, Java, Microsoft .NET, Object-C and others