Mark Nottingham - Leveraging the Web: Caching:

“The requirement was to make large-ish PDF files available on the internal network world-wide nearly instantaneously, with access control.

An external vendor had quoted a solution; it involved rolling out a pair of Windows NT servers (for redundancy) to each location around the world, each with its own database and custom-designed software that client applications on the reps’ desktops would connect to. The whole thing would be tied together with message queues and centrally managed.

Our exec wasn’t happy because the deployment cost for this was huge. […] So, when I wondered aloud why they didn’t just use Web caches, he got very interested.”