Remember the network computer? It was going to change the world of technology as we know it and cut into the domains of Microsoft and Intel.
The little device, a stripped-down computer that runs software off a server, hasn’t taken off as quickly as proponents had hoped, but it is showing signs of life.
Some industry analysts contend the concept already has dramatically changed things, particularly for businesses worried about the cost and complexity of computing.
But it hasn’t quite happened as some expected. To date, the chief contribution of the network computer has been to force Microsoft and Intel to develop a PC that is managed by a network server and can be more cheaply maintained, bringing down the total cost of computing.
Worldwide last year, just 150,000 network computers were sold, versus 80.5 million PCs, according to Dataquest in San Jose, Calif.
For the network computer, a flicker of life came earlier this month when Sun Microsystems announced that Sabre Group Holdings, operator of the major airline-reservation system, would resell Sun’s JavaStation to 40 airlines and more than 75,000 travel agents.
Sabre, largely owned by American Airlines, will recommend JavaStation to its customers as the preferred platform to connect with airline-reservation systems worldwide.
“This is huge,” said Steve Tirado, director of product marketing for Sun’s JavaSystems. “Sabre does 44 percent of the U.S. airline ticketing and 38 percent of world airline ticketing.”
It is the first time a business has gone to a Java system for “a mission-critical application,” Tirado said.
Sun launched the JavaStation in October 1996, but it has hardly taken flight. The company has had a couple hundred pilot programs but only recently began shipping its product.
The network computer was conceived of as a cheaper alternative to running personal computers powered by Intel’s processors and using Microsoft’s operating and applications software. The idea was that instead of cluttering your desktop with a bulky PC with a huge hard drive and other peripherals, stuffed with bloatware from Microsoft, you could have a little box, sometimes called a thin client, without a hard drive or any other kind of drive.
The little box–dozens or hundreds of little boxes–would be connected to one or more servers, super-fat and super-fast personal computers, that would house all of the programs.
But what has happened so far is that companies adopting network computers, like Sabre, are using them to replace dumb terminals rather than fully functional PCs.
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The chief proponents of the network computers have been Oracle, Sun and IBM, with a lot of cheerleading and some technical help from Netscape, Microsoft’s competitor in the browser software market.
The vision, largely articulated by Larry Ellison, Oracle’s chief executive, was that these little boxes would clobber Microsoft and Intel.
Ironically, Oracle seems to have made the least headway in the market, talking about, but never shipping, a network computer itself. Instead, its network computing operations have been transformed into a software company called Network Computer Inc., an enterprise in which Oracle and Netscape are investors.
Randy Brasche, communications manager for Network Computer, concedes that the market has developed much more slowly than Oracle had hoped.