The Year of Living Dangerously

One year on, the network computer looks like a smart move by Oracle,not a madcap gamble, says Geof Wheelwright

The network computer (NC) bandwagon looked set to take off at Oracle's Open World conference in San Francisco last week. The first anniversary of the concept was celebrated with a flurry of announcements about hardware and software.

Oracle subsidiary Network Computer Incorporated (NCI) revealed details about the pricing and availability of NCs based on its reference design.

NCI said it was working with hardware, consumer electronics and software companies to deliver network computing solutions to corporations, Internet service providers (ISPs) and systems integrators.

The company's partners demonstrated a range of existing and future NC devices and software applications.

NCI said its partners have committed to produce the NC for the consumer and corporate markets in a number of form factors. Probably the most interesting for anyone selling consumer electronics products is a development by RCA, which unveiled a plan to manufacture a $300 set-top box NC for the consumer market. VCR maker Funai showed off plans to make something it calls the Janesa, an NC for the corporate and consumer markets.

Akai Digital, IDEA, Proton Industrial, Uniden and UK firm Acorn also announced pricing and production details of their NCs, all based on NCI's reference design.

NCI revealed it is making in-roads into the all-important corporate computing market through 'proof of concept' trials at more than two dozen corporations and ISPs worldwide.

Working with the hardware companies, NCI says it will supply the database, networking software, applications, consulting and support services to implement the NC in the corporate and consumer markets.

The man charged with running this high-profile subsidiary claims that there is huge interest from the market. 'Demand for the network computer has been phenomenal,' says NCI president Jerry Baker, explaining why the concept appeals to corporate customers that want to replace aging dumb terminals.

'There are 20 million to 40 million character-based or terminal-based systems out there and most corporations would like to upgrade them. But the cost and complexity of going to PCs is too much. NCs offer a way to do this at a fraction of the cost.'

He says many companies that run data entry systems, transaction-based systems, hotel and airline reservations systems and office productivity applications users are prime candidates for corporate use of these systems.

Acorn's NC is shipping in Europe and is available to corporations in volume for less than $400. Acorn also developed four network computing devices for demonstration at Open World: the Office NC, the Exec Phone NC, the set-top box NC and the network computer TV.

Consumer electronics and hi-fi giant Akai Digital promises it will ship its $349 Internet Connection NC in the first quarter of 1997. The company says the Internet Connection is aimed at the home market and will offer consumers entertainment, shopping, news and email through a television set.

Funai claims its Janesa offers corporations and consumers easy and affordable Internet access. It is due to ship in December for less than $500.

IDEA is already shipping its Internet Client Station (ICS) at $500 and claims it has successfully deployed the system in many corporations to address the requirements for terminal enhancement and replacement, multi-tier client/server transaction processing, and office automation.

Probably the most ambitious partner is RCA, which promises to deliver a $300 set-top box NC by spring 1997. Its product will allow consumers to surf the Web, send and receive email, and bank and shop online.

One perhaps surprising announcement was that Oracle wants to take on Microsoft in the office suites business with a new addition to its previously announced Interoffice messaging system. Codenamed Hat Trick, it includes three productivity applets that will run on NCs: a wordprocessor, a spreadsheet and presentation graphics. Oracle claims that these features will allow NC users to create, email and receive formatted documents without launching separate applications or attaching files - it will all be in one application.

Although Interoffice 4 is currently shipping, Oracle says Hat Trick has been developed completely in Java and publishes natively in HTML. It further promises that graphically enhanced documents created with Hat Trick will be able to be viewed by any Web browser.

As a result, Oracle says that users do not have to worry about software incompatibility when switching platforms.

In addition, Oracle claims that Hat Trick applets are much more user-friendly and easier to learn than traditional front-office applications because the applets work together interchangeably.

Finally, repeating an oft-suggested theme of Oracle chairman and CEO Larry Ellison, the company says that Interoffice with Hat Trick focuses on the tasks that users perform most frequently, eliminating the resource-consuming functions that are found, but hardly ever used in most software productivity suites.

'Most customers who use a computer use a wordprocessor, send email, create presentation graphics and develop spreadsheets,' says Joe Duncan, Oracle senior vice president of Object, Internet and Groupware Tools.

'Interoffice and Hat Trick provide users with that access. Because of its low memory requirements, adherence to open computing standards and ease-of-use, Interoffice with Hat Trick is the perfect personal productivity software for the Internet, corporate intranets and NCs.'

Unlike MS Office or Corel's Wordperfect suite, Interoffice with Hat Trick will apparently run in less than 2Mb of memory and will require no client disk space.

All the Hat Trick applications will be designed to run from within Interoffice's messaging interface. Oracle suggests that users need not open multiple applications to access wordprocessors, spreadsheets or presentations.

If you want to know why Oracle feels the need to launch something like Interoffice with Hat Trick - other than to let Ellison tweak the nose of arch-rival Bill Gates - the company says it is an important component of its network computing architecture (NCA).

NCA is supposed to be a common set of technologies that allows all PCs, NCs and other clients to work with all Web servers, database servers and application servers over any network.

A key component of NCA is the idea of the software cartridge, which is supposed to be a highly manageable software component that can reside on the client, the application server or the database. Hat Trick applets operate as cartridges which reside on the application server.

Oracle says the Hat Trick wordprocessor and presentation graphics applets will ship with Interoffice 4.1 in the first quarter of 1997. The spreadsheet applet is due in the second quarter.

The company is also proposing a special pricing model based on a yearly payment of about $125 rather than a one-off licence purchase.

Despite Sun Microsystems announcing its Java Station NC competitor late last month, Oracle says it is committed to Java and has outlined a strategy to deliver Java-enabled client/server applications. Oracle says its Java-enabled applications are designed to reduce the costs and maintenance that are associated with mission-critical client/server computing.

The company has pledged that all of its applications suite - including financials, manufacturing, supply chain management, human resources and payroll modules - can be deployed on any client platform that supports Java-enabled browsers.

These client platforms will apparently include personal computers, the Mac and Motif-based machines, as well as the NC and Java Station.

Oracle expects to deliver its complete suite of Java-enabled applications in spring 1997, and boasts that it will be well ahead of other client/server applications vendors, including SAP, Peoplesoft and Baan.

It further suggests that Java-enabling the entire Oracle applications product line will provide significant benefits to customers by allowing them to implement mission-critical systems with zero installation or maintenance effort required at the client.

In addition, it says that customers with existing customised Oracle applications can thus deploy the applications on Java-enabled platforms without having to rewrite code.

The Java-enabled client/server applications are designed to support Oracle's Project Apollo electronic commerce technology. The company says this will allow Internet-based business-to-consumer transactions to transfer automatically into order entry, inventory and accounting databases.

Oracle has been at this Java-enabling business for a while. It considers this addition of Java support to its client/server applications as the third phase of moving to building Internet support into all its applications.

The first phase, announced in April, was aimed at creating what Oracle called 'a new business paradigm of self-service designed for the broad new user communities on the Web'. As such, it included workflow technology to control transactions from all users.

Next came Oracle's announcement in August of version 2 of Oracle Applications for the Web.

In that unveiling, it introduced version 2 of Web Employees, Web Customers and Web Suppliers modules, which are supposed to provide intranet transaction processing and information access functionality for managers, operations personnel and other employees. Oracle says version 2 includes support for more than 60 types of business transactions and inquiries.

'By using Java technology, Oracle continues to help our customers effectively leverage the Internet and corporate intranet for their enterprise computing solutions,' says Ron Wohl, senior vice president of Oracle's applications division.

'We can deliver Java-enabled applications faster and more effectively than our competition because of our scalable architecture and integrated technology stack, which includes tools, applications and the database.'

All of these NC announcements are being driven by the evangelising stance of Ellison. Last week, he took a swipe at Microsoft's announcement of its Net PC initiative with Intel, which he says is basically the same beast as the NC but dressed in Microsoft's clothes.

'It used to be called the Simply Interactive PC and now Microsoft maintains the Net PC is totally different because it has a disk to use as a cache,' says Ellison. 'The Net PC is a network computer - the way we operate when there is no connection is also to use as a disk as a cache.'

So Ellison says Microsoft is doing what it said that it didn't need to do when he first proposed the NC idea late last year. 'The idea Microsoft said was the dorkiest idea, the idea that Microsoft said would only occur over dead bodies, is now happening at Microsoft,' he fumes. 'We would like to thank Microsoft for endorsing the network computer.'

Ellison rejects the idea that there is a lack of the infrastructure or bandwidth to make something like the NC successful. 'I believe there is plenty of bandwidth - at Oracle World we demonstrated video-on-demand on a 28.8Kbps modem,' he says. 'The network computer is designed to work - and work well - on a plain old telephone line.'

He says some people have misunderstood how applications will be handled in the consumer versions of the NC. 'The home version of the network computer doesn't download applications - they are stored on a cute little Rom card.

You don't have to wait a minute and a half - and there is no 47-second wait for Microsoft Word to load.'

In addition, Ellison suggests that it doesn't make much sense to talk about the NC being targeted at the corporate market. 'We believe it is a communications device, first and foremost, like a telephone,' he says.

'It is applicable in the home, the office and in portable versions we carry with us.'

He even predicts that the cost of consumer versions of the network computer will be under $100 by 2000.

'It will be built into all telephones, all your digital set-top boxes,' he says, suggesting that televisions might also come with NC technology built-in and that it won't take much to do so. 'They already have a processor and memory.'

Ellison mocks the PC industry's boast of getting PC prices down to below $1,000. 'We are saying we can get the NC down to below $100,' he says, suggesting that ease of use and standards will be just as an important issue as price for NCs to be a success.

'We have low-cost computers - such as the Apple Newton, Sega machines and Sony Playstations. The problem with all of these low-cost computers is that they are not based on any standard.'

For dealers, the central message has to be: watch this space closely.

NCs will roll out in significant numbers over the next few months and applications will start to follow shortly after. These applications will determine just how successful the platform will become.

If the NC effectively delivers useful applications - along with all the applications that can currently be run with any standard industry browser - then it has to be considered a serious contender. At that point dealers will have to think about finding ways of meeting the demand for NCs and NC-based applications.