Domestic science

There's no place like home it seems. Home printers, home scanners andnow Bay Networks is aiming its networking products at the small user too.Guy Clapperton asks is the time right for the domestic network?

A few years ago, I got talking to someone who knew nothing about computers and mentioned that I had been writing about networking systems together.

He told me, surely this should be easy; you plug a wire into one computer, plug the other end into another computer, and that's it. They're linked.

This was intended as a flippant comment, but there is a serious issue in there, and that is that most people do not, on the whole, understand the vagaries of networking PCs together. This has never been seen as a problem before, but this perception might easily change once Bay Networks and others get their teeth more firmly into the retail market.

The entry-level products from Bay are called Netgear, and a great many of its offerings are similar to what Bay has to sell anyway. The main difference between the standard products and the newer versions will be in functions. The Netgear range, for example, has no network management, and the ISDN router is an existing product with a few widgets taken out.

The lower functionality is reflected in the price, and competitive research by Context shows Netgear as a strong offering in terms of cost.

The big question must be whether or not there is a market for networked PCs in the small office, and more especially in the home. And the home is one of the markets Bay is aiming at. The idea of a market for networking peripherals at this level is based initially on research from the US, where the range made its debut before it appeared in the UK. According to Bay marketing manager Paul Trowbridge, five million PCs will be sold into small businesses in the States in 1997, and 15% of households in the same market will have more than one system. Networking, the company says, is a "must" in the info world today, and networking products will be the next wave of market growth.

So far so good, and this would explain why not only Bay but 3Com, Cisco, Hewlett Packard and others have tried to jump on the same bandwagon. But it has to be asked: is the UK necessarily the same as the US?

Historically, the two markets have shared much in common, (although the UK, and to an extent Germany and France, have been a couple of years behind the USA in terms of market development). This cannot be seen more clearly anywhere than in the rise of the home computer system itself. But not all resellers are convinced that they want to sell a network. After consultation with the purchasing director, a Dixons spokeswoman said the company didn't feel it could give any coherent comment: "It's a market we're not really in, so we don't have much information or opinion."

This is entirely valid, unless you happen to be Bay and the other manufacturers hyping the retail channel as the next major outlet for your networking products. Bearing in mind that Dixons owns PC World and Currys, you might start to think this could be a problem. The independent researchers, meanwhile, believe that if there is to be a market for low-end retail networks, then the Bay way of getting in is a coherent one. Eric Lepers Morse, senior analyst for Lan market research at Context, says the absence of any management on the router marks it very clearly apart from the professional products, although he queries whether a 15-port router can be useful without some sort of software infrastructure. "It's raised some eyebrows among the analysts, but it's very clear marketing," he says. The reasoning behind this apparent omission is no doubt related to the presence of Bay's own Baystack, a managed solution for the smaller enterprise. There has to be a differentiation somewhere.

As far as Context is concerned, the attitude of the network suppliers going down the retail route is that they need to achieve "delivery by all possible channels," says Lepers Morse. All product sectors covered through all possible channels. It sounds a comprehensive sales policy, but the resellers still seem reluctant. Steve Lockie, managing director of network distributor Data Translation, concedes that the market is maturing, and even that there is potential for small businesses to get involved with small networks. "But if you're looking at a strictly retail end-user business, then no, I don't think there is a demand for it at that level yet."

More importantly, he queries whether the networking giants have really got the infrastructure to deal with the new environment. "There are point of sale materials and all sorts of things you need to make the retail product palatable." Bay counters with memory aids for retail salespeople, posters and packaging, but it concedes that it is new to the area. And so are most of its potential customers. Rather than serving an established need, for the moment it is almost certain that the role of the manufacturer will be in making the market and banging the drum until someone takes notice.

Michael Kraftman, chairman of Tempo-owner the KF Group, has two problems with the idea of selling networks to consumers. First, he does not regard the Tempo customer as a potential buyer for a computer network. "We're very much at the home end of SoHo," he says. More seriously, there are the support implications.

The thing is, most retail outlets are not geared towards supporting mission-critical applications that are vital in keeping a business going. The domestic user is sometimes too inexperienced to understand the limitations of single PCs and their support, let alone a network of them. Kraftman points to users who have never backed up their data and who expect everything to be restored as it was when a hard disk has broken down irretrievably.

"Networking extends that sort of problem ... the market has to grow up before we can handle it," he says.

It seems fair to suggest that, for the small office set-up, some element of networking is becoming essential in order for a business to compete.

Selling network peripherals into these is therefore a useful idea, and many retailers already serving that market will be relieved that their established customers do not have to go elsewhere to find the goods they want. Anything that dissuades customers from going into other shops has to be good news, and Bay's pricing is keen.

The home user, a couple running their business together or the kids playing networked Doom as envisaged by Bay at Netgear's launch, is in a different position. Ultimately, retail customers don't know how to set up their own home network, and showing them what will look like a souped-up junction box won't sell them the idea.

The customer, though, takes second place in all of these deliberations, hints Context's Lepers Morse: "Other companies' solutions were ready to go but they had management," he points out. "This will be suitable for, if not a network-centric PC, then a PC with a lot of networking."

So is that what it is all about? Is Bay pushing its idea of the network-centric computer becoming pervasive, and using its products to do so?

Bay itself has a different explanation for the absence of management: "If retail customers see something going wrong they pick up the phone, they don't go to the screen," says Patrick Lo, director of product operations for Bay's Netgear division. To an extent he is right, although countless retailers can offer multiple horror stories about users who thought they could fix things by themselves.

But once the possibility has been raised, Netgear looks increasingly like a bid to nudge the computer industry in the direction its manufacturer believes it ought to go. Retailers who take the kit will be aiding this push, which if Bay's projections are wrong, could result in a lot of irate users whose equipment doesn't quite do the job it was bought for.

And a final thought for any Doubting Thomases who believe the smaller customer simply isn't ready for the network peripheral: ten years ago the same could have been said about the domestic computer itself. Fifteen years ago, domestic videos were the things the rich family up the road had and you didn't. Twenty years ago it was news when someone bought a colour telly.

For the moment, since the goods will sell through Vars and standard dealers, as well as retailers, they must be classified as "network products retailers might like to pick up if they feel there's the demand" rather than purely retail products per se. But experience elsewhere in the field of computers and consumer electronics tells us this will change over time.

The domestic network will happen all right. What the manufacturers are gambling on is that it is about to happen now. Bay appears to be taking it a stage further and saying it will happen in a particular form.

We shall see.