| Andromedia Announces Aria: The Web Site Recording and Reporting Solution With IndustryLeading Scalability and Performance |
| SAN FRANCISCO, California, July 30, 1996
- Andromedia today announced the Aria World Wide Web Recording and Reporting
System, the only Web site tracking solution that enables Webmasters and
IS professionals the flexibility, scalability and performance to capture
Web site activity data at any point in time. Aria provides quantification
and qualification to companies and users who are attempting to measure
the success of their Web presence. Andromedia will ship Aria in the third
quarter of 1996.
"Web usage is doubling every six months. As bandwidth increases and online content gets better, the number of people who will regularly access information on the Web will skyrocket," said Kent Godfrey, president and CEO of Andromedia. "This increased volume will make managing Web traffic quite difficult. Aria is the only solution that addresses this impending dynamic. Through its unique architecture, Aria delivers results that allow content providers to accurately analyze their target markets and respond to their needs." Content providers, advertisers, users and Webmasters all share the need to thoroughly understand the behavior of their Web site visitors both historically and in real time. Based on the information Aria captures, content providers can dynamically generate personalized content and advertisers can better target their advertising messages with the detailed reports and graphs on specific usage activity. As a result, the Web site can be improved to create more effective and longer lasting visits. Powerful Data Capture and Recording System Designed as an object-oriented distributed system, Aria's use of multithreading and distributed processing enables industry leading scalability and performance. Aria is comprised of six discrete modules that can be bundled in numerous combinations depending on user requirements. Unique to the Aria system are the Aria.monitor and Aria.recorder components, which are powerful data capture and recording engines. The Aria.monitor resides on the Web server as a linkable library. It monitors the connection between the user accessing the Web through a browser and the Web server itself. Aria.monitor captures all designated activity information passed between the client and the server and sends this information in real time to the Aria.recorder module. Aria.monitor captures all of the information such as user cookie profiles, form field data posted to the server, and all of the information ordinarily written to log files. The Aria.recorder receives the raw data sent from the Aria.monitor module, buffers it if necessary and creates a new object, or updates an existing object with the new data. Aria.recorder then sends the object to the Aria.store module and performs a set of clean up functions eliminating all of the transient data. The Aria.recorder is designed for high performance and scalability which is achieved by embedding threads into the design of the system. Aria.recorder supports hundreds of threads running simultaneously, and is limited only by the memory and swap space of the hardware. The product can run on either the same machine as the Web server or on a dedicated server in a local or wide area network. Web administrators can easily configure multiple Aria.recorders running on separate dedicated servers to keep up with peak traffic. "Content providers can grow with Aria because it was designed to address the high performance and scalability issues of the Web marketplace," said Scott Capdevielle, chief technology officer of Andromedia. "The system's architecture has been tested to handle an average rate of 10 million hits per day and its robust design will accommodate the unforeseen requirements for capturing Web site data in the future." Other System Components The other system components that make up the Aria product family are the Aria.store, Aria.api and Aria.reporter. The Aria.store module accepts the data object from the Aria.recorder and buffers the data in main memory so that applications can access the data in real time. Every five seconds, Aria.store writes the new data objects to disk while still maintaining the real time data in cache memory. The Aria.api is the primary visible component of the Andromedia object model. It is comprised of six object classes and defines the way in which applications access the information contained in Aria.store. The Aria.api consists of the following object classes: visitor, visitor aggregate, content, content aggregate, server and category intersections. These objects are currently accessed through C++ or Perl function calls. A Java interface is planned in the next release. The Aria.reporter is used for analysis and reporting of the data captured in the database. This tool links to the Aria.store through the Aria.api and enables the user to view any of the data in a tabular or graphical format. An intuitive user interface allows Web administrators, content providers, advertisers and marketing managers to easily view, analyze, print and distribute reports regarding Web site activity. Aria Environments Supported, Availability, and Pricing Aria supports the following environments:
Aria pricing will range from $1,800 to $35,000, depending on hit volume and system configurations. About Andromedia Andromedia, Inc. was founded in May of 1995 and incorporated in December 1995. The company's mission is to develop and market the industry's most powerful, flexible and widely used platform for recording, accessing and reporting activity within interactive media. In April 1996, the company announced its initial round of equity financing. Investments from SOFTBANK, Draper Richards, LP and Platinum Ventures were acquired. Privately-held Andromedia is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Contact:
### Andromedia and Aria are pending trademark approval and are subject to change prior to the July 30 announcement date. All other brand names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and are hereby acknowledged. |