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Networking at Comdex
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November 19, 1997: 7:09 a.m. ET
Microsoft, Sun reveal competing visions of the future of NCs
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LAS VEGAS (CNNfn) -- The battle over who will shape the future of the burgeoning network computer industry is heating up at the Comdex technology convention in Las Vegas.
The fight pits Microsoft and its plans for Windows-based network computers against an alliance between IBM Corp., Oracle Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc., who foresee network computers which utilize Sun's Java language.
At Comdex, Microsoft unveiled the first beta version of its Windows-based terminal server, known as Hydra, which it sees as the basis of its NC plans. The server was developed as a joint project with Citrix Systems Inc.
Network computers are seen as the challengers to the dominance of personal computers in the business and home computer market. Unlike PCs, which store applications and other data on their local hard drives, NCs would conceivably access both applications and other data held on a server.
The benefits, say its proponents, would be twofold: NCs, because they require less computing power and memory would be less expensive than PCs. They would also require less administration because any changes made in applications or data would need only be made at the server level.
Sun Microsystems' director of product marketing, Steven Tirado, attacked Microsoft's NC plan, which are "thin clients," meaning that everything runs off the server. "The limitation is that you can't put too many people on one server," he said Tuesday.
Sun's NC strategy entails that applications created with the Java programming language would be temporarily downloaded to the worker's terminal. This, he said, would eliminate the challenge of dealing with overloaded demand on a server.
However, Tirado's criticism was blunted by a comment from Sun's NC partner, IBM. Bob Dies, general manager of the network computer division of IBM, said that, initially, even IBM's network computers would have to build on existing applications, which would almost certainly include the dominant Microsoft offerings.
"We are big on Java," said Dies, "but it's going to be a long time before we rewrite everything in Java."
The stakes are large. John Gantz, senior vice president at technology research firm International Data Corp., estimated at Comdex that 570,000 network computer devices would be sold this year.
But that by the year 2001, more than 10 million would be sold. He estimated that the Java-based NCs would emerge as the front-runners at that time, with a 6.7 million share of that figure, and the Windows-based NCs grabbing about 3.7 million of the market.
IBM's Java network computer, known as Series 1000, is expected to be released by the end of the year. Microsoft said it did not yet know when the final version of Hydra, and its ensuing network terminals, would be ready for the marketplace.
Microsoft's "thin client" NCs, because they would only require enough software to boot up and connect to the server, would thus probably be cheaper, say analysts.
--by staff writer Randy Schultz
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