The Emissary appliance from Coyote Point Systems and Digital Envoy is designed to combine global load balancing with web content geo-targeting to enable bandwidth savings and the delivery of premium services.

by Wayne Kawamoto [January 9, 2002]

Coyote Point Systems and Digital Envoy announced their joint development of Emissary, a global load balancing appliance that incorporates geo-location capabilities. According to the companies, Emissary will let ISPs and global companies automate the delivery of location-specific content while efficiently routing traffic through geographically dispersed server farms.

Using Emissary, the companies claim that ISPs and enterprises can target and display web content based on the geographic location of the user down to a city-level worldwide. This should enable web sites to:

1. Provide a local "look and feel" to the user, instantly presenting a user with web content in local language, currency, etc. as well as geo-targeted product offerings
   
   
2. Reduce bandwidth costs by eliminating downloads of web pages that ask users to "choose your location"
   
   
3. Allow location-based restriction of downloads and content to comply with local laws or contractual obligations

The companies say that Emissary can route Internet traffic to the server farm that can best handle the user request based on intelligent geo-location and global load balancing considerations. This should provide end-users with faster overall access to web content. Furthermore, Emissary is designed to avoid broken connections by automatically bypassing servers or server farms that are down.

"ISPs and webhosts deploying Emissary will be able to offer their global business customers a unique capability—to tailor what their website visitors see according to their location," said Bill Kish, Chief Engineer at Coyote Point Systems. "Combining that new function with efficient global traffic management will set a new standard in worldwide Quality of Service."

"The combination of Digital Envoy's NetAcuity technology and Coyote Point's Envoy and Equalizer intelligent load balancing products creates a powerful global traffic management solution with functionality unsurpassed in the marketplace," said Rob Friedman, Executive Vice President of Corporate Development, Digital Envoy. "The ability to manage globally dispersed server farms and geo-target content from the same appliance is a revolutionary concept that should greatly benefit our customers."

Availability and pricing
Emissary is scheduled to be commercially available in January 2002.

Pricing will be $25,000 per unit, plus subscription fees based on the volume of use of the geolocation service.

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