You're obviously too unsubtle to my a MSFT spy.
As to a database appliance being popular, I think that it's a matter
of what the box is being used for. If it's just running something
like 8i, the Unix community probably won't care (what is a Unix
community, anyway), since they bought the box to do what it's doing.
Oracle has said that their research indicates that most machines
running Oracle databases are doing just that, and so having a box
that came configured and ready to run might make sense. We'll see.
As to the NC, if it's dead people should have told NCI, since they
are still around. The idea never made a lot of sense to me, but if
there start being enough applications that run entirely on servers,
it could work. However, with PC's for sale at $300 (I saw a story
about this in the Murky News today but I don't know how real this
is), it's looking harder to make money on a box that competes with
a stripped-down PC and a browser installed.
The "failure" of the NC was actually a failed attempt by Oracle to
promote the centralized server model that they are pushing now. I
think that the problem was that the company didn't have the right
products to make this work, since the NC is like pushing on a string.
8i is real, though, so it will succeed or fail depending on whether
this model of computing will work. I'm betting on winning... |
