Article on Ellison's NC Thang- RIP!
this is from Network World Fusion, which you have to sign up for to get access to; then you get heaps of junk mail from them... it's written in a snotty tone, but there is good info there, if you like to read between the lines.
networkworld.com
<Ellison drives stake right
into NC heart
By Doug Barney, John Cox and Chris
Nerney
Network World, 5/18/98
Ellison drives stake right into NC heart By Chris
Nerney, John Cox and Doug Barney Almost three
years ago Oracle chief Larry Ellison began
banging the drum for network computers (NC),
claiming the low-cost Java-based devices would
push aside clunky conventional PCs. Hopeful
users wanted to believe him.
After a while the pounding got softer. Then
Ellison grew nearly silent on the matter. But in
recent weeks, Ellison has once again taken up the
topic, and in the process, dashed hopes for an NC
corporate revolution.
Ellison and other Oracle officers in the past few
weeks have been sounding a consistent theme:
Very low-cost Windows PCs, OR IMAC???equipped with Web
browsers and TCP/IP net access, will rule the
desktop - not NCs!
In fact, Oracle officials now claim that the
personal computer has become, or is becoming, a
network computer.
No comment
The Oracle CEO has acknowledged that these
''new'' PCs will block the network computer - as
defined by Ellison - from corporate desktops. But
that doesn't really matter, he said, because the PC
is becoming simply an appliance, and the primary
user interface is becoming the browser.
Ellison wouldn't talk to Network World, but
Oracle Senior Vice President Mark Jarvis took on
the job of spin control.
''We say the PC has mutated: if it has a browser,
it's effectively become an NC,'' he said. ''[When
accessing Internet data and applications, a PC]
uses the local disk only to load the browser.''
''When people pull up their browsers and go out
on the 'Net, they're doing network computing,
not personal computing. From Oracle's
viewpoint, our goal is to make all our database
applications accessible via the Web browser,''
Jarvis said. ''This [browser] is the true zero
administration client: to access these database
applications, all you need is the browser.''
Industry reaction to Ellison's revisionist theme
ranged from outright contempt to bewilderment.
''This is one of his most pathetic attempts yet to
weasel out of his absurd predictions,'' said Jesse
Berst, a long-time PC pundit and currently editor
of www.anchordesk.com, an Internet news
service for computer technology. ''I was at
several of the events where he launched the NC,
and it didn't even include a hard disk when first
promoted.''
''[Ellison] is dancing quite nicely as he exits the
[NC] business,'' said Roy Graham, senior vice
president of sales and marketing at Wyse
Technology, Inc., a San Jose, Calif., builder of
Windows terminals. ''The NC was always
positioned as an alternative to the PC,'' he said.
Wyse last year scrapped plans for an
Ellison-inspired Java network computer, arguing
that customers were not ready to replace
laboriously built PC client/server systems with
untried Java devices.
Some MIS directors seemed less willing than
Ellison to throw in the corporate NC towel.
''It doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense to me to
have a full-blown, high-powered PC, even if it
does cost less than $1,000, because of the cost of
ownership of these devices - for support, for help
desk, for administration,'' said Dave Klinzman,
director of IT, Long's Drug Stores Corp. of
Walnut Creek, Calif. ''Even if you can buy a PC
for $700, that's only the cost of acquisition -
that's not the cost of maintaining the damn
thing.''
The NC fad started almost unnoticed nearly three
years ago at Telecom 95 in Geneva, where
Ellison made a public pitch for a $500
''communications device'' designed specifically as
an Internet client.
Within a few months, the idea was sparking
enormous controversy and was sarcastically
derided by PC stalwarts.
However, the NC idea prompted MIS and
business managers to take a fresh look at just
what PC computing was costing them.
That cost was growing every year, fueled by
ever-larger Microsoft Corp. systems and
application software, coupled with
ever-more-powerful Intel Corp. processors.
This crystalizing of customer resistance prodded
Microsoft and Intel to respond to Ellison's NC
drumbeating.
First the vendors came out with a specification
for the NetPC, a sealed PC with additional
software so that it could be better managed over
the network and loaded with software from a
central server.
And early this year Intel announced it was
creating a specification for ''lean clients'' that
would use Intel processors but could run a range
of thin-client operating systems.
At the same time, NC shipments have lagged,
hamstrung by the lack of Java applications and by
Sun's delay of nearly a year in shipping its
JavaStation NC. n
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