Leader: NC Charts its Course by Dead Reckoning

Although the network computer (NC) will find its niche soon, the repeated claims made this week that the PC is dead sound lamer than usual. Robin Bloor?s report The Enterprise in Transition (see Page 12) is based on solid, well-researched analysis, but its assertion that Java will be Microsoft?s Achilles? heel ignores the reality of Bill Gates? approach.

It is true that Java is an immature language and that it has had a profound effect. But the report may be wrong to tie Java in with the growth of the NC. Java looks as if it has the strength to beat off Microsoft?s Active X in the short term. But what about all those Corba applications out there which Oracle, Sybase and Informix customers are developing for the large corporate database users? It?s what happens in the back office that determines what hardware you buy as a front end. Ask any bank. There is just too much data sitting about on massive mainframes, and those users will not be installing masses of NCs in place of dumb terminals.

The NC market may be lucrative to start with, but it is a static one if we are to believe Oracle chief Larry Ellison?s predictions that the average NC will last 10 years. Any dealer looking at this market has to understand its short-term nature. Given that the average corporate user replaces a PC every three years, installing NCs where appropriate could be a major cost saving.

So NCs may replace many PCs. But they will not replace the PC totally and are never likely to at any stage. Oracle will profit only from those companies running huge databases which use PCs as opposed to terminals.

This debate was started by Oracle, but the company hasn?t delivered on time or as cheaply as it promised. But it has delivered a concept that works, even if the separation of the NC arm shows that it is not as convinced of success as Ellison would have us believe.

The Bloor report is just too categorical in its statements for me. Microsoft is just as likely to drop the standards game and embrace Java. Complex client/server installations will not be reorganised to be replaced by NC installations, because companies using mid-range boxes are not about to install mainframes unless they want to run a huge database. Yes, mainframe centralisation is becoming popular. But the effects on the PC market are hugely overstated. And let me say it once again: the PC is not dead.