ICE stands for Information and Content Exchange. On October 27, 1998, after more than a year of private development, a press summit was held in San Francisco to announce the completion of this new XML-based Web protocol. The press event was held to celebrate the completion of the ICE Version 1.0 and to provide the first public look at the new standard. On October 28th, W3C acknowledged the submission of a note on ICE. I certainly believe this new protocol will be important to Web publishers of all kinds. Certainly ICE will create new business models for commercial publishers. But it will also be important to anyone who wants to distribute (push) information on the Web.
The ICE 1.0 Summit summit began with a glitzy video quickly followed by a brief introduction to XML by Jon Bosak, introduced as the "father of XML." Jon began by admitting that XML was, indeed, an idea originated by Sun. He quoted Tim Bray, another author of the XML standard by saying "XML is the ASCII of the future." Jon told the audience that today XML is quite exciting but just as with ASCII, it will be literally unnoticeable in years to come. Jon continued by telling the audience that XML came from the publishing world. We must look at documents as being in 2 pieces--content and structure. By combining these with a style sheet, we can create presentations of this information for the future. This is a new paradigm and not an easy one to understand according to Bosak. Yet understanding this idea is critical to understanding XML. To help the audience understand the XML concept, Jon showed us XML source from his own "Bosak Slide Show Language". He then showed us a number of presentations from the same source, making the XML concept real for his audience. Bosak concluded by discussing key XML benefits such as re-usable information, media-independent publishing, and internationalization.
But what does XML have to do with eCommerce? According to Bosak, eCommerce is about information and so is XML. Although XML came from a document world, it does not have to be about documents. In fact XML is optimized for the exchange of structured data, and that is critical to commerce. It is platform independent, it is an open standard. Sun has supported XML because it sells platforms and because it is a mirror image of Java (a platform independent code). ICE is a perfect example of an industry protocol that uses open standards. ICE is both about publishing, data exchange and also about electronic commerce. ICE demonstrates the immediate utility of XML in a major way.
Brad Husick (Vignette Corporation) and Dan AppleQuist (TheStreet.com) provided an introduction to ICE. It provides support for the syndication process. Syndication is the controlled distribution of information to a set of individuals known as subscribers. Today commercial publishers (magazines, newspapers) have subscribers and syndicate information in print. Other publishers, such as Boeing, National Semiconductor, NewFlyer Bus Company, provide or syndicate information (such as maintenance or operation) to individuals that have subscribed by virtue of purchasing products from the company. ICE is designed to facilitate electronic syndication of either of these kinds of information on the Web.
On-line businesses have syndication problems. In order for eCommerce to suceed, we need an easy way to establish on-line, networked partnerships. Today it is custom, fragile, error-prone and expensive. That is why we don't see this as a predominant Web model. ICE was designed to provide us with a standard model that can be automated to support syndication for everyone. ICE will enable both subscriptions and data delivery.
The information distribution model for TheStreet.com, a provider of financial information was used as an example of how ICE would promote eCommerce. At the summit, Dan Applequist of TheStreet.com told the audience that today TheStreet.com requires a huge investment in custom code required to support its business model. AppleQuist predicts that ICE tools will replace custom code over time. This will enable TheStreet to focus on their business model and not on developing enabling technology. ICE promises to lower costs and increase opportunity for the entire eCommerce community. A standard format for interoperating between business partners is critical. ICE is not a file format, but rather a bi-directional protocol. According to AppleQuist new opportunities created by ICE include:
ICE was authored by a small, group known as the AdHoc ICE Authoring Group or the ICE AG. The ICE AG was kept purposely small to facilitate the fast-track development of this standard. Members of the group included Brad Husick and Neil Webber from Vignette Corporation, Jay Brodsky, from Tribune Media Services, Bruce Hunt of Adobe, Phil Gibson from National Semi-conductor, Andy Werth from CNET, Rick Levine from Sun Microsystems, Inc. and, Laird Popkin from News Internet Services.
The companies that developed ICE were evenly split between software vendors and users of technology. This means that it has some real user requirements. National Semiconductor stressed how important information is both in the sales cycle as well as to support the product. NS looks forward to scaling and personalization the current catalog process using ICE in the future. CNET is both an aggregator and exporter of content. Today each relationship is a technology exercise. CNET looks to ICE to make this process both standard and easy. Impact will reduce cost of operations, and expanding distribution model. It will also enable us to access new information sources as well. News Internet Services believes ICE will reduce engineering resources spent on developing syndication technology. Another factor is the format that information is received today. Today there is a lot of "dirty" data that is acquired. ICE should help minimize the dirty data and streamline automated feeds.
According to the ICE AG, information distribution on the Web today is much like it was in the early days of radio. Standardization is the missing piece to information distribution information on the Web. Neil Webber, from Vignette, predicts that ICE will reduce friction of information interchange on the Web. He also predicts that ICE will be used in ways we never dreamed when the standard was developed. It will most likely be used for all sorts of information exchange, not just just for publishing. Phil pointed out that ICE is a generic replication scheme across all environments. It will provide the fluidity that will accelerate what the Web can be. It will change the model from a people constraint to a Web server / bandwidth constraint.
Serveral live demos of data interchange using ICE were provided during the ICE debut summit. In 1999, we look forward to the release of more ICE-compliant products. Industry demonstrations will provide input into and refinement of the ICE standard.
