Network Computers: A Word To The Wise

When the Ancient Greeks visited the Oracle they often got an ambiguous or obscure response. After the launch of the NC and Oracle 8, Bobby Pickering thinks the name is particularly apt

Larry Ellison must have won many admirers for the bravura performance he gave at New York?s Radio City Hall to launch Oracle?s first network computer (NC) demo units alongside Oracle 8 ? now being touted as ?the database for network computing?. Some may find that claim too rich to swallow, especially as the market has yet to make a judgement on the NC environment, let alone the best database for fat server/thin client setups.

But Ellison?s solo show was a sensation. He prowled the many levels of the vast stage, single-handedly talking us through a range of presentations, each designed to demonstrate aspects of the software developed by Oracle subsidiary NCI (Network Computing Inc) ? ease of installation, disaster recovery, Windows compatibility ? and a few features of Oracle 8 ? scalability, data partitioning and fault tolerance.

But the NC was Larry?s main preoccupation, much to the surprise of many who thought Oracle 8 would be the focus. First up was a demo to show that NCI has come up with an NC system which is frightfully easy to install. Big, brawny Larry used all his well-publicised gym skills to heave a lumpy PC out of a box, followed by a slim black NC, hook them up and put a CD-Rom into the PC that automatically configured it as an NC server. It was so simple, a fool could do it. Then, while the server purred away attending to itself, it was off to another level for a light demo of the NC?s email applet. Larry grabbed an animated Gif from a florist?s Web site and pasted it into an email to his mum. (Subtext: Larry is an all-American boy and he loves his Mum. Or possibly, for the more cynical, Larry is a cyber-cheapskate who sends his Mum Gifs rather than gifts.)

Then it was lights dimmed for a video clip of Bill Gates a yearearlier, prophesying that NCs and PCs would be completely incompatible. Larry laughed and laughed. He wanted to show Bill just how compatible his new computing paradigm was with Bill?s old Windows one. He cut some text from a Word document on a PC and eventually (the demos weren?t fast!) he pasted it into a file on an NC hooked up to the same network.

The NC was running NC Connect for Windows, a Java app that Oracle/NCI seems to have developed to prove this point. The mysterious app wasn?t mentioned again, and no mention could be found in the collateral which accompanied the launch. ?That?s just how compatible we are, Bill!? Larry sniffed triumphantly to wild applause.

Then, as Larry walked away from the demo, the bench on which the machines were sitting suddenly collapsed, catapulting the PC and NC into the air. They crashed in a firework-fuelled heap, centre stage. Larry looked vaguely surprised but showed no signs of panic.

Now, it?s not very clear what all this was supposed to illustrate. Larry walked calmly around the smouldering machines, picked over the entrails of the PC with a gloating air, and finally retrieved the NC?s smart card. This meant he could then go on to the next demo, where he showed how he could access the same file he?d been working on, through another NC hooked up to the same application server. The whole thing was quite surreal.

Experts who study such things might have been amused by the highly ironic display of a hated PC being dispatched in a dramatic puff of smoke, and Larry?s beloved NC rising from the ashes. But the pyrotechnics were overdone. Later we were treated to a Compaq Server going up in smoke (we knew it was a Compaq because Larry kept telling us so) to prove just how resilient Oracle 8 is in a multi-server environment after one goes down.

Unfortunately, PCs and NCs exploding on stage can add up to a botched demonstration. Once you realise it?s part of the act, you start asking why there?s a need for all the tricksy gimmicks. To some, the smoke-filled stage gave the impression of being a smokescreen, a diversion from the Oracle 8 launch itself. Ellison may be trying to popularise the

NC concept, but isn?t he also in danger of being seen taking his eye off the knitting? Championing the NCI network computing software may be an attempt to widen Oracle?s product base, or possibly an attempt to establish an environment that gives Oracle 8 an advantage over rival databases. But it also means big risks, and people will ask if Ellison is biting off more than he can chew.

The Network-in-a-Box package (a $4,995 two-user pack shipping mid-July) is designed to take NCI into corporations, schools, government and small business markets through a Var channel. But it?s really just a demo pack with big question marks over the core NCI software bundled with it.

So far, just one Var has been appointed ? the gorgeously named but obscure Propeller Portable Computer Products. As yet, no European shipment dates or channel appointments have been disclosed by NCI?s European MD, Mauro Righetti.

Ellison once again claimed that an NC network will result in big cost savings. To support this claim, NCI released figures which compared a five-user NCI setup with a five-user MS BackOffice-based client/server environment. It estimated that the NC network will result in an overall cost saving on hardware and software of 58 per cent.

Microsoft, however, would be within its rights to point out that the fully fledged MS system provides huge amounts of application power on its fat clients, compared with no allowance for application software costs in the NC model. If the Microsoft server goes down, Microsoft clients are still usable by employees. Not so the thin client. Microsoft will argue ? and rightly so ? that a genuine cost comparison would need to be measured over a certain period of time.

Another big question mark over this cost comparison concerned the price tag Oracle put on the PC clients ? $2,500 apiece, compared with the $1,200 NC client (including monitor, keyboard, mouse and laser allocation). Now that many of the big PC manufacturers, headed by Compaq, are talking about forthcoming Net PCs in the ?around the $1,000? range, this could prove to be less of an advantage when the boxes eventually ship. Oracle uses a base $650 NC in its estimation. Even that is showing evidence of inflation on Ellison?s much-hyped talk of a $500 appliance last year.

Oracle?s big day was further overshadowed by some of its best friends advising greater caution. Sun?s Scott McNealy warned Ellison that his obsession with the NC was getting him unfocused.

?It?s the Java browser versus the Windows PC,? said McNealy. ?Larry is great but he got it wrong by pushing the $500 computer. Any employee would be insulted to get one of those on his desk.?

You can see why Scott is so upset with Larry. Larry wants to pretend that the whole network computer paradigm revolves around Oracle?s products. Singing from the company?s current hymn sheet at a pre-launch briefing last month, UK managing director Philip Crawford said: ?Oracle 8 is the engine of the network computing age. It will be to network computing what Windows was to personal computing.? Sun, however, sees it all in terms of the Java Virtual Machine versus Windows. Verbal tiffs and jockeying for position within the Java camp has begun in earnest now.

Other friends of Oracle who have voiced some low-level dissent over the NCI products include Novell, whose UK market development manager, Eugene Forrester, has cautioned against Oracle giving businesses the idea that NCs mean rip and replace.

?There?s a danger that people will see this as involving a whole new infrastructure. Our view is that the intranet is an evolution from networking. There?s a need to make provision for the huge investments already out there ? you need to sell it in terms of assimilating the new technology in situations where it makes sense.?

Forrester also queried when NCI planned to deliver the full NC Server software, which incorporates Oracle?s universal application server. There are still some obvious gaps in the three-tier NC architecture, he said. ?Between the browser, or universal client, and the universal server on which the data resides, sits the Universal Application Server. This is the middleware where Intranetware, for example, resides.

For the NC to function correctly it needs an object request broker, which will be based on Corba standards. Oracle, Novell and Netscape have all licensed the Visigenic Orb and we?ll have it integrated with Intranetware, probably by the end of the year.?

Oracle admits it is not well advanced on integrating the Visigenic object technology into Oracle 8 ? in fact, it was dropped at the last minute from the Oracle 8 release and will now be available in a ?future release?, according to John Spiers, UK director of marketing for servers. Oracle 8 has also shipped without the companion Sedona toolset, which will help independent software vendors and Vars build object cartridges into the new object-relational structure. Ellison also admitted last month that there are squabbles going on within Oracle between alternative development teams.

None of this was confronted or addressed at the Oracle 8 launch, suggesting that the NCI pyrotechnics concealed more than they illuminated. The company is not sitting as cosily as it would make out. As for most other software companies, these are trying times. Oracle?s core product needs to leap ahead in line with the changing realities of a world based on open standards and the impact of the internet. Oracle 8 means not only new object types but also moving programmers on to new ?object relational? ways of thinking when they access data.

Some companies seem to be glad of a new flexibility that has emerged from the fluidity of the current situation. Churchill Insurance says it has benefited greatly from being involved in the Oracle8 Beta-1 programme.

?By giving early feedback on the problems we were having, the functionality in Oracle 8 was changed in ways that suited us nicely,? said Churchill?s project manager Nigel Noble. ?The increased batch performance with parallel processing and the partitioning, so you can zoom in on data, are welcome improvements.? Whether the changes will suit others is another question.

The problem for Ellison is that Oracle 8 is a big database for enterprise computing and will never make him the household name that Bill Gates has become. You can see why Larry wants to hitch his wagon to the network computing star ? it could win him a place in the popular imagination in a way that Oracle could never have done. But there are signs that not everyone inside Oracle is pulling together.

In such circumstances, it makes sense that Ellison should identify an external enemy and go hammer and tongs against him. The demon is, of course, Bill Gates. Larry is obsessed with bashing Bill. Not just over the NC versus PC confrontation, but also because Microsoft SQL Server still wins against Oracle in low-end markets. In the US, where Bill-bashing is a big business, Larry is quick becoming its high priest.

Unfortunately, Oracle 8?s real database competition is the likes of Informix and IBM, whose Datablade and Extender technologies will eventually be pitched against Oracle?s cartridges in the field. The true showdown won?t necessarily be with Gates.

Ellison?s extraordinary performance, full of macho cockiness and bravado, glossed over the key questions surrounding Oracle 8 in a spectacular show of Las Vegan proportions. He is a fascinating personality to watch, and shows increasing signs of believing in the over-hyped persona his image-makers have dreamt up for him.

He made brief allusion to his antics on the Web this year, suggesting he wanted to take over Apple, when he pulled up his Navigator browser in one demo and found the Apple URL as the live link. ?Oh,? he smirked, wiping it aside, ?I?m not interested in Apple any more.?

Such calculated indifference may win laughs on the day, but it will also win enemies. Other people may one day cheer Ellison?s hubris. Humility isn?t his strong point, but in his case, a little could go a long way.