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Technology Stocks : NCDI - Network Computing Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stan Stone who wrote (3284)	11/20/1997 9:23:00 AM
From: Doug Klein	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4453

re: Anyone trying to do it? I think Microsoft is finally figuring out that the model we are proposing actually allows them to sell more software, not less. I believe they will start proactively pushing this concept sometime next year. It will, of course, be fought by the Windows group, since it does endanger that particular franchise, (you only need NT and CE, after all, not "Windows"), but the long vision will be there. re: main benefit The most obvious benefit is administrative cost. The 'hidden' winner, though, is still hardware costs. How can this by, you say, when PC's cost sub-$1000? It is just because the overall architecture is infinitely more flexible, scalable, and affordable. Let me use an analogy to make a point. Take your mind back to 1993. Assume you are not at CERN, or any of the other major universities or research centers. Assume you are, however, in the technology business, at least as a PC consumer. Think about the problem of information, as in archival, access, and distribution of. What technology would you be preaching as the saviour? Why CD-ROM of course! You'd be all excited about bigger and better drives, you'd be excited about CD jukeboxes, and oh, boy, the promise of writable CD's would sound like nirvana. Now let's say this odd fellow from some university came to you at that time and said, "Er, I was thinking that perhaps you'd just as soon read the documentation for your new system from a server that we've got sitting over in Switzerland instead of inserting a CD in your local drive." "What!", you say. "Heresy! Asinine! You little pipsqueak, you obviously know nothing about networks! Why such a thing would be preposterous. It would never work! The very thought of giving up the control of my very own collection of beautiful CD's! How could you suggest such a thing!" Fast forward to today. Would you prefer to get company information in the mail, on a CD, through a fax? Would you like to snail-mail me questions and let me fax you an answer? Would you like a library in your building of all the SEC filings instead of access to EDGAR? If you spent the money on the SEC filings on CD's, do you think your capital investment would be more or less than letting the SEC store all that gunk? Given that you have internet access and a browser, isn't it true that if you spend $0 for the next 5 years your 'information library' will be orders of magnitude larger than it is today? Isn't this fundamentally a much, much lower cost 'hardware' investment? On the server side, isn't it true that if you spend $X to get some finite amount of data 'stored', you could double that storage for 1/2 $X the next year, which is a completely plausible strategy in a networked world? Why buy today what can be put off until tomorrow? What we're proposing with the notion of 'thin client computing' is exactly the same thing, taken to the next logical step. It should take no great leap of faith to see that a remote compute server is merely the logical extrapolation of a static data server. Allow the server to transform the data 'just in time', and you basically have a compute server. I have always 'kept the faith' over the past ten years because fundamentally, at a very macro level, this model will happen. I saw a fascinating demo of an 'invention machine' the other day. Underlying the system was a basic concept that there are fundamental shifts in technology that all systems undergo, sort of like phases in nature. Computing is no different. What has occurred, and what will occur is actually quite predictable. The only thing that is not predictable is the day to day pertubations along the path, which is what the stock game is all about. Predicting the future is a macro level issue, picking stocks is quite microscopic. Hmm. Peet's overload. Completely rambling answer. Back to main point: yes, the administration is lower cost. But the hardware is even more so, if you consider the big picture.