Eli Barkat, brother of Nir Barkat and his partner in BRM, which gave birth to Check Point, does not understand why he needs to explain time and again that push technology is not dead, it has merely changed tracks. In fact, it has not even changed tracks, only the market has changed.
In many respects, BackWeb Technologies (BWEB) is the pioneer of the Internet. As early as 1995, the company Eli founded with his brother's active assistance dealt in the development of push technology. It was designed to alleviate congestion on the Internet, and create a solution for speedier surfing.
The technology enables information to be provided in the background, without the user specifically requesting it, and advise him of the receipt of information only after it has arrived, without his having to wait for its arrival to his computer. After the market was created, three companies immediately emerged as leaders: Israeli company BackWeb, and two American companies, PointCast and Marimba.
As soon as the product was released on the market, Eli Barkat flew to the US, where he acclimatized so quickly that today he sounds and looks as if he was born there. It means that, in addition to managing his Internet company, he never forgets for a moment to sell the company or its products. A round-the-clock salesman.
His optimism is contagious, despite the facelift the company has undergone in recent years. When asked how BackWeb is doing, Barkat smiles confidently and says his major problem lies in recruiting new staff quickly enough for BackWeb offices throughout the world and for the development facilities in Ramat Gan.
Although BackWeb does not boast revenues of tens of millions of dollars (no push company can), it is the sort of company that is constantly in the headlines, because of its pioneering character, and due to the fact that it is becoming an infrastructure solution for large corporations, particularly software and computer enterprises
The push market suffered many jolts, and each of the three leading companies turned to different directions in order to provide solutions for large enterprises' business processes.
Eli Barkat's persuasive powers and his tremendous self-confidence helped him mobilize some of the most well known names in Silicon Valley, for example: Gwen Spertell, former vice president for global ISV alliances at Oracle; Todd Johnson, former senior vice president of server solutions at Silicon Graphics; and Israeli Roni Or, former R&D graphic servers director at Scitex.
BackWeb is currently in the critical stage of implementing its new strategy of building a brand name around the idea of "electronic business" as a platform for a range of different solutions. The company is interested in building an "army of developers" to develop applications for the BackWeb platform. Users of the technology will pay royalties. This is a most daring strategy, which resembles that of Oracle and Microsoft, and an enormous dose of self-confidence is required for it. Eli Barkat has been endowed with lots of it.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on December 16, 1999