Israeli company BackWeb Technologies, one of the pioneers of Internet Push technology, plans to make an IPO in the near future, evidently within six months. This was confirmed to "Globes" by
Gwen Spertell, Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing & Business Development at BackWeb. The final date for the issue apparently depends on the announcement by certain large software houses of important deals with BackWeb.
BackWeb develops and produces software that enables organizations to distribute vital information rapidly via the Internet to thousands of users, customers, employees, or to strategic partners. It was set up in 1995 by Eli Barkat and Jerusalem company BRM (the first main investor in Check Point).
So far, some very large bodies have invested in the company, including the likes of Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, the GE Pension Trust, SoftBank, Intel, BRM, and local venture capital funds.
In the past two years, BackWeb has defined a business strategy based on development of an Internet communications platform that enables various applications to be developed. At the same time, it focused on a few key markets for which it developed dedicated products, such as the new Sales Accelerator program intended for use by salespeople in large organizations. So far, BackWeb systems have been purchased by 250 large organizations, among them giant companies like Compaq, Cisco, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, the world’s largest travel agency, and others.
BackWeb president and CEO Eli Barkat said the company’s target was to become "the de facto standard" in the field, and that the way to becoming the industry standard lay via the developers. "We have decided to focus on the ten largest software houses. We’re talking to companies like CA, PeopleSoft, Baan, and others. When three of four of them tell the world that BackWeb is the solution - the whole world will choose us. We’ll be there no later than the middle of the year," he said.
"Of the world’s five largest software producers, we have signed an agreement with one, are about to sign with another, and have started negotiating with a third," he added.
Under BackWeb’s business plan, it will receive royalties according to number of users ("seats") of all the applications that operate on its Push platform. Barkat: "We estimate that many applications will be created for our platform. The Internet is accelerating business processes, because the consumer has rapid access to the information, but the larger organizations are, the harder it is to make changes."
Published by Israel's Business Arena on January 14, 1999