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By Mark Gibbs
Network World, 2/23/98

Despite industry infighting over standards and developing market factions, the "little computers that can'' - network computers (NC) - are slowly moving onto intranets.

To qualify as an NC, a device must conform to the Network Computer Reference Profile published last June by The Open Group. According to the profile, an NC must have a Java-based execution environment, support network-resident and stand-alone applications and be dependent on the network. IBM, Netscape Communications Corp., Oracle Corp. and Sun Microsystems, Inc. developed the profile, but The Open Group manages it.

You should be able to put an NC on a desk, plug it into the network, switch it on and walk away. Storage and computing power is centralized at the network server, making management fairly easy.

NC adoption has been rather slow, but users tend to be enthusiastic and satisfied. Such is the case at the California Housing Finance Agency (CHFA), says Dominick Maio, chief information officer.Staffers at the Sacramento-based agency, which makes loans to first-time home buyers, primarily use computers for word processing, spreadsheets and database applications. Since 1994, CHFA has been operating the equivalent of today's NC environment, Maio says.

That's because the agency has been using HMX X-Window terminals from Network Computing Devices, Inc. (NCD) with an X-Window version of WordPerfect. A year ago, CHFA added a Windows NT server to support Windows applications. It uses NCD's WinCenter software to deliver NT applications to the desktop devices. "We avoided one cycle of purchasing new desktop equipment," Maio says.

A growing field

A number of vendors besides NCD play in this market (see graphic). One of them is Network Computers, Inc. (NCI), an Oracle spinoff founded last year. It is aiming at corporate users with its NC Network in a Box and servers.

NCI's basic kit consists of a Toshiba Equium 5200D server, which has a 200-MHz Pentium processor with 64M bytes of dynamic random-access memory and a 2.5G-byte hard disk drive and three NC Client NCs (based on x86 PCs) complete with an Ethernet hub and 10Base-T cabling.

NCI's NC Cards, the hardware components of the authorization system, are novelties. A chip embedded in a card stores information about the user. Card users will not be granted network access if they do not have the correct user name and password.

Another player in the NC market is Corel Corp., which last October launched the Video Network Computer from its new NC company, Corel Computer Corp.

Based on the Digital Equipment Corp. StrongArm SA-110 microprocessor and 32M bytes of RAM, the device is oriented toward multimedia use. It offers composite high-resolution video output, video capture and compression/decompression for voice and videoconferencing, full stereo in/out, microphone and speaker, and support for analog and IP phone.

Corel's choice of operating system for the Video Network Computer is interesting and unique in the NC market: It uses Linux running a Linux-compatible Java Virtual Machine from SunSoft, Inc.

Of course, intranets aren't going to migrate to NC wholesale. There's still that pesky - and enormous - existing base of conventional PCs, 40% of which are estimated to be running DOS, according to a survey by Giga Information Group, Inc., of Santa Clara, Calif.

The Java connection

Sun's answer to this problem is JavaPC, a software package that will provide the same environment as Sun's JavaStation NC but will run on DOS. Sun expects to ship JavaPC this quarter for approximately $100.

JavaPC will be Java Developer's Kit 1.1.4-compliant, which means it will run the same Java applications that run on an Intel Corp. PC or a Unix workstation with Java support.

JavaPC only will require DOS, DOS device drivers and a network connection. It will come with a TCP/IP stack and the HotJava Web browser. It also will support Citrix Systems, Inc.'s Independent Computing Architecture protocol, allowing JavaPCs to act as terminals to a WinFrame server.

The product could be a tremendous way for Sun to soften up the market and make NC technology understood and acceptable to the corporate IT shops.