Comcast Ready to Kick Applications With 'CodeBig'

Comcast Corp. is hoping to increase the value of its network by encouraging more application and software development from outsiders and finding ways to allow its video- and IP-based services to be used in a wide variety of Web-connected consumer devices.

Comcast is looking to separate the business logic of those services from the presentation environment, which is already comprised of a wide range of technologies, including Adobe Systems Inc. Flash, Microsoft Corp.'s Silverlight, Apple Inc., and Google's Android. Even HTML has different ways to be displayed and rendered, as evidenced in Web browsers just as Explorer, Firefox and Chrome.

That would mean Comcast would have to centralize its back-office functions, in the proverbial cloud, during letting the routers and switches take care of the distribution. "The [distribution] network we want to be as dumb as possible," Kotay says.

Late last year, the Wall Street Journal shed some light on that, reporting that Comcast was testing out new navigation and guide products that lived in the cloud and could be changed and upgraded much more rapidly than they can on traditional cable box set-tops that don't speak IP.