Barry Appelman
Encyclopedia
Barry Appelman is recognized as being the father of the "buddy list" and AOL instant messenger
. Companies had been using crude forms of Instant messaging
within their own networks for over forty years, but the idea of presence
, i.e. who is logged on at any given time, was non existent. It was not until Appelman, and his colleagues at the Thomas Watson Research Center, first began to write programs on the mainframe system letting each other know when they were actually online, that modern day Instant Messaging was born.
In 1994 while employed at AOL, Appelman hired a single contract programmer, Stephen D. Williams, and for five months they worked together building a prototype system that allowed AOL subscribers to have an early form of the buddy list.
In 1995 AIM was launched internally to AOL employees. It was initially dubbed "the stalker feature" since many employees were uncomfortable having their co-workers know when they were online. AOL decided to make Appelman's system available to its subscribers in May 1997. Ten years later, there were over 53 million AIM users worldwide.
standardization. Carpenter and Wijnen authored rfc1228 on SNMP DPI, among others.
Appelman's small team of developers produced TCP/IP stacks for all IBM operating systems. Dean Hiller authored MVS
TCP/IP. Jay Elinsky authored TCP/IP for VM/CMS. Jacob Rekhter authored TCP/IP for AIX. Oleg Vishnepolsky
authored TCP/IP for OS/2
and IBM POS terminals
. Appelman was one of the first in the industry to recognize the importance of security in the world of open systems. He was the first one to make Kerberos security system out of MIT's Project Athena
a commercial product by having Galina Kofman
port this security software to various OS.
Kofman also did FTP for VM/CMS. Dick Ryniker authored NFS for VM/CMS and MVS.
Mr. Appelman's ability to attract and retain top talent with his remarkable vision, intuition and charisma played a key role in his ability to execute on the Internet strategy for IBM. The stream of his innovation included offloading of TCP/IP processing from IBM mainframes to OS/2 servers, graphical TCP/IP clients, SNMP and FTP APIs, fastest terminal emulator MYTE, S2 Spreadsheet
that connected via TCP to IBM DB2, and many others. Particularly noteworthy was the innovation by Appelman and one of his development managers Matt Korn to get voice and video flowing over IP back in 1987 - way ahead of everyone else.
AOL Instant Messenger
AOL Instant Messenger is an instant messaging and presence computer program which uses the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow registered users to communicate in real time. It was released by AOL in May 1997...
. Companies had been using crude forms of Instant messaging
Instant messaging
Instant Messaging is a form of real-time direct text-based chatting communication in push mode between two or more people using personal computers or other devices, along with shared clients. The user's text is conveyed over a network, such as the Internet...
within their own networks for over forty years, but the idea of presence
Presence information
In computer and telecommunications networks, presence information is a status indicator that conveys ability and willingness of a potential communication partner—for example a user--to communicate...
, i.e. who is logged on at any given time, was non existent. It was not until Appelman, and his colleagues at the Thomas Watson Research Center, first began to write programs on the mainframe system letting each other know when they were actually online, that modern day Instant Messaging was born.
In 1994 while employed at AOL, Appelman hired a single contract programmer, Stephen D. Williams, and for five months they worked together building a prototype system that allowed AOL subscribers to have an early form of the buddy list.
In 1995 AIM was launched internally to AOL employees. It was initially dubbed "the stalker feature" since many employees were uncomfortable having their co-workers know when they were online. AOL decided to make Appelman's system available to its subscribers in May 1997. Ten years later, there were over 53 million AIM users worldwide.
Career at AOL
Appelman joined AOL in 1993 to head up all of AOL server and host development efforts. He authored many innovations and patents: an instant messaging system, a highly scalable email system, ad servers, TCP/IP enabled browsers, among many others. Barry Appelman and his former colleagues from T.J. Watson Matt Korn and Mike Conners who also came to AOL, were crucial to taking AOL from a distant third position in online services to that of a formidable leadership - all within 2-3 years.Career at IBM T.W. Watson Research
Barry Appelman led IBM's foray into TCP/IP at the Thomas Watson Research Center from 1984 until 1993. Appelman was able to turn complicated IBM politics to the advantage of TCP/IP, open systems and Internet standards. This was not an easy endeavor given that at the time IBM was pushing hard a competing family of internal protocols called IBM Systems Network Architecture. In the end, the work of Barry Appelman proved critical to the IBM's adoption of TCP/IP and its early embrace of the Internet. Mr. Appelman and his group were active in the Internet standardization. Jacob Rekhter authored several Internet RFCs in routing protocols, including: rfc1092, rfc1105, among others. Mr Appelman's team was also active in SNMPSimple Network Management Protocol
Simple Network Management Protocol is an "Internet-standard protocol for managing devices on IP networks. Devices that typically support SNMP include routers, switches, servers, workstations, printers, modem racks, and more." It is used mostly in network management systems to monitor...
standardization. Carpenter and Wijnen authored rfc1228 on SNMP DPI, among others.
Appelman's small team of developers produced TCP/IP stacks for all IBM operating systems. Dean Hiller authored MVS
MVS
Multiple Virtual Storage, more commonly called MVS, was the most commonly used operating system on the System/370 and System/390 IBM mainframe computers...
TCP/IP. Jay Elinsky authored TCP/IP for VM/CMS. Jacob Rekhter authored TCP/IP for AIX. Oleg Vishnepolsky
Oleg Vishnepolsky
Oleg Vishnepolsky is the author of IBM's S2 Spreadsheet. Vishnepolsky also authored TCP/IP stacks for OS/2 and IBM POS terminals. He also is known as an aphorist , , - S2 spreadsheet :...
authored TCP/IP for OS/2
OS/2
OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal...
and IBM POS terminals
IBM 4690 OS
IBM 4690 Operating System, sometimes shortened to 4690 OS or 4690, is IBM's specially designed Point of Sale operating system. 4690 is widely used by IBM's retail customers to drive retail systems running their own applications as well as IBM's Application Client Server Environment , Supermarket...
. Appelman was one of the first in the industry to recognize the importance of security in the world of open systems. He was the first one to make Kerberos security system out of MIT's Project Athena
Project Athena
Project Athena was a joint project of MIT, Digital Equipment Corporation, and IBM to produce a campus-wide distributed computing environment for educational use. It was launched in 1983, and research and development ran until June 30, 1991, eight years after it began...
a commercial product by having Galina Kofman
Galina Kofman
Galina Kofman was the author of Kerberos_ for various IBM systems. Kofman also authored FTP for IBM VM/CMS and OS/2. She received two IBM CEO Outstanding Technical Achievements awards and holds a patent on grid applications...
port this security software to various OS.
Kofman also did FTP for VM/CMS. Dick Ryniker authored NFS for VM/CMS and MVS.
Mr. Appelman's ability to attract and retain top talent with his remarkable vision, intuition and charisma played a key role in his ability to execute on the Internet strategy for IBM. The stream of his innovation included offloading of TCP/IP processing from IBM mainframes to OS/2 servers, graphical TCP/IP clients, SNMP and FTP APIs, fastest terminal emulator MYTE, S2 Spreadsheet
S2 Spreadsheet
S2 Spreadsheet was a Lotus 1-2-3 compatible spreadsheet developed by IBM in 1984. It had all the features of Lotus 1-2-3, plus it had an ability to connect to IBM mainframes via TCP/IP and pull data from IBM databases such as IBM DB2 and IBM SQL/DS...
that connected via TCP to IBM DB2, and many others. Particularly noteworthy was the innovation by Appelman and one of his development managers Matt Korn to get voice and video flowing over IP back in 1987 - way ahead of everyone else.
Patents
Barry Appelman authored 77 patents: http://patent.ipexl.com/inventor/Barry_APPELMAN_1.htmlQuotes
- “There is some need [Instant Messaging] fulfills. Once you start using it, it’s hard to live without it”
- "You don’t really want to see someone online and then find out they’re not [really] online,”
- "the germ of the idea [for the Buddy List] came from the chat-room list,"
- "If you never been late to a plane, you spend too much time in airports"
- "TCP, TCP - that's the way you want to be" to a group of IBM SNA zealots that included senior managers