Telstra backs machine learning technology for application delivery

Telstra Ventures is investing up to $10 million in Instart Logic, a US-based provider of an application delivery services platform that uses machine learning to predict user behaviour.

Instart Logic’s platform downloads only the relevant aspects of a webpage to a user, enabling users to view and interact with a page before all elements have finished loading. It learns what website or app features a user is most interested in over time and optimises the HTML and JavaScript code when loading.

Telstra will use the technology – claimed to reduce the download size of a typical application by more than 30 per cent – inside its business.

The Palo Alto-based company launched in 2013, and introduced its machine learning capability in February 2015. It is one of the first to have made this kind of technology, being a competitor to traditional content deliver network (CDN) vendors.

A Telstra Ventures spokesperson told CIO Australia that the telco will initially invest between $5-10 million in Instart Logic.

Mark Sherman, managing director of Telstra Ventures, said in a statement that the telco wants to cost-effectively improve performance, user experience and security of its websites and applications.

“Given mobility continues to be one of the top trends in the technology space, we are excited to start the year with an investment in Instart Logic,” he said.

The technology also includes multi-layered security to protect against mostly Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) and other cyber security attacks.

Its Software-Defined Application Delivery (SDAD) architecture decouples the hardware and network from the software when delivering applications. It also uses policy management, de-duplicating, transcoding, re-sizing and caching.