Do not mistake the NC (network computER) for Oracle's promotion (as well as Sun, Netscape, IBM, the OMG, and pretty much everyone outside the Microsoft sphere of influence) of network computING. THe network computer is simply a client platform that should be recognized as the most effective vehicle for lowering total cost of ownership - it's not what Ellison is betting the company on. The message I'm hearing is that they're not out to replace PC's - just give their customers an alternative way of managing their applications and data, taking the business logic off the desktop and putting it in centralized, highly scalable, load-balanced, fault tolerant, professionally managed application servers (supplied by Oracle), and similarly taking the data (including word docs, spreadsheets, etc.) off wherever it may be and putting it in Oracle8. What Oracle's doing with network computing goes far beyond a distracting foray into hardware.
Network computing is a dramatic simplification of how we use, manage, and deploy information technology, achieving eye popping savings in total cost of ownership while at the same time retaining the power of traditional client/server architectures. And the real beauty of network computing (for Oracle investors) is that it plays toward Oracle's strengths in high-end enterprise-caliber software. Far from a distraction, it's a way of expanding the market for Oracle's core products (Database and application servers; web-enabled, NC-compliant Applications; and the services to implement all of the above), and putting a greater premium on Oracle's strengths (its adherence to open standards, such as Java and CORBA, which are freely available; its focus on platform independence, freeing you from Microsoft's OS grip both in client and server; and its knowledge of and ability to meet industrial strength data and application management requirements).
The Oracle vision, which I think is right on the money, is to move to a framework where you just need to plug whatever device you're using into a socket anywhere in the world, turn it on, authenticate yourself, and get to work/play/or whatever. You shouldn't have to worry about whether your device will boot up properly or whether the OS is set up correctly any more than you have to worry about the pbx's or switches that give you a dialtone when you pick up the phone, or the power grids that supply the current when you flip a lightswitch.
And if Oracle, Sun, etc ever prove this vision, imagine the market for Oracle's products. They don't intend to make much off the NC. It's the software that supports the thin client, whether it's an NC or a browser running on an old 486.
Client/server is how Microsoft makes its money. The longer it remains predominant, the stronger Microsoft's 'standardize your entire computing infrastructure on Microsoft' message becomes, and the weaker Oracle will become. Have you seen reviews of SQL Server 7? It's largely a rewrite of 6.5. It's no longer a shrink-wrapped toy. Oracle's technology lead is still there, but it's shrinking. You can laugh about NT all you want, but it will scale - sooner than you think.
The whole point of this post is to convey that there aren't two groups of Oracle shareholders, and there aren't two focuses of Oracle's strategic direction. The focus is singular: to accelerate growth. Period. And with Microsoft closing in, the way to do this is to change the rules. Network computing is the new rulebook. |
