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The Network Computer - May It Rest In Peace
ABSTRACTIt is time to declare Network Computer (NC) dead. Personal Computer (PC) will be the dominate force in future corporate and home computing. INTRODUCTIONWhen Oracle's CEO Larry Ellison announced early this year that his company had built a $500 network computer, he triggered a media frenzy that sent ripples of confusion, excitement, and even fear throughout the entire PC industry. "I believe that the dominance of the PC will prove to be a temporary transitional phase in the information age, not unlike steam power in the industrial age," he said in a speech to the Commonwealth Club of California. "The era of the PC is almost over, and the era of the NC is about to begin." (Croft) Although Ellison claims later in the same speech that Oracle's NC will not replace PCs, his statements about a network computing model in which all computing intelligence is derived from the Internet and everything hooked to it and is accessed through a cheap network appliance have made us pause to think about the fate of our current systems. After analyzing numerous articles, reviews, reports and summaries from many companies, we believe that NC will introduce costly incompatibilities and result in customers losing the flexibility and choice which the PC platform offers. On the contrary, our old friend, the PC will be able to play an important role in future corporate and home computing. In this paper, we will discuss the origin of NC, the nature of Network Computing, the difference between NC and PC, the Java Virtual machine, and why "it is time to declare NC dead." THE ORIGIN OF NCOracle's trademarked Network Computer is without a doubt the most highly visible net appliance to emerge from the flurry of network computing hype. The concept of NC is a dirt-cheap computer that discards today's overweight Operating Systems (Oses) and bloated, platform-specific applications. Instead, it runs a microkernel OS and platform-independent software written in an interpreted language such as Sun's Java. Monolithic, kitchen-sink applications that give way to component-based programs and applets that you download from a network or the Internet only when you need them. In theory, you could do almost anything with an NC that you do with a PC, except it will cost you a lot less for the hardware and software. Connectivity costs, however, may be significant. (Oracle Corporation) The final NC as we see today is the direct result of the alliance against Microsoft-Intel (Windows-Intel or Wintel) monopoly. The alliance includes many big corporations like Sun Microsystems, Netscape, Oracle, IBM and Apple. They want to develop NC as a new weapon to break up the Wintel monopoly and promote their own products. The debate over NCs has led to much loose talk about the destruction of Microsoft. Will NC be the killer of Microsoft? The answer is No. Microsoft has always been known as the best follower in software industry. They do not invent, they borrow. For example, the idea of Microsoft Windows was borrowed from the Mac Graphical User Interface (GUI) platform to get rid of the ugly DOS, yet it became the best selling software in the whole world. As they did before, they refine the idea of NC and fight back right away. "Our strategy is to embrace the best of what the NC promises - reduced complexity and cost, the Java programming language, and three tier network architectures - and marry that with the best of the PC - applications and hardware compatibility, a choice of hardware and software, and the rich user experience of PC applications. Through three key initiatives (the Simply Interactive PC, the NetPC, and the 'Zero Administration' Initiative for Windows), we are focused on solving the significant customer issues of cost, ease-of-use, and manageability, without introducing a costly and incompatible new architecture." (Microsoft Corporation)
Figure 1 How the NC Limits Choice The NC, by itself, does not address customer's requirements because:
There is no standard NC OS. There is no standard for a device driver model, API, or windowing system. This will lead to fragmentation and more, not less headaches for Information Technology (IT) professionals. Customers want more choices of standardized hardware, increased homogeneity, and better compatibility across their computing infrastructure. Microsoft recently announced NetPC which will provide a better solution than the NC. (Microsoft Corporation). The NetPC is a new member of the PC family that will reduce the costs of business computing by optimizing design for a particular class of task-oriented users that do not require the flexibility and expandability of the traditional PC. The NetPC builds upon the Windows phenomenon; the NC does not. The PC is an amazingly resilient and adaptable platform, and the PC industry is an efficient mechanism for embracing and delivering new technology to customers. During the past five years, the PC has grown to encompass networking, multi-media, and the Internet - all technologies that, at the time, were widely predicted to be the end of the PC. Today, the industry is focused on reducing cost of ownership. And there is every reason to believe that the PC will evolve to become a less costly asset for corporations to own as well. There are several reasons why PC is the best-selling computer on the market: (The Gartner Group)
Twenty years after the PC revolution, the NC is a potential throwback to a less productive, incompatible, proprietary, vendor specific computing environment. The NC means giving up mobile PCs, throwing out the rich capabilities of today's applications software, and abandoning the choices of low cost hardware and software available today. The downsides are significant; the benefits unclear. NETWORK COMPUTER VS. PC HARDWARE DIFFERENCESIt's important to understand how the NC and the PC differ. An NC device which is very different from the mainstream PC and will not benefit from the enormous economies of scale inherent in today's PC industry - standardized microprocessors, bus architectures, and devices - and in turn this will drive prices up, making NCs less cost effective. However, NC devices which are similar to PCs will presumably be vulnerable to the same kinds of cost of ownership claims as PCs. And if an NC is similar to a PC, then why would a customer choose to add an incompatible device to the corporate network? The Network Computer Reference ProfileThe definitive authority on the NC is the Network Computer Reference Profile, first published in July of 1996 by Network Computing Inc. (NCI), a subsidiary of Oracle Corporation, and endorsed by Apple, IBM, Netscape, Oracle, and Sun at that time. (Thompson) Like the NetPC Reference Profile recently announced by Microsoft and Intel, the NC Reference Profile is intended to define what an NC is. The NC Reference Profile specifies hardware guidelines, and required protocols. NCI specifies the following hardware guidelines - not requirements - in the NC Reference Profile.
NCs which conform to the reference protocol must support IP, and IP-based protocols including TCP, FTP, Telnet, NFS, UDP, SNMP, and optionally DHCP or Bootp. In addition, NCs must support HTML, HTTP, and the Java virtual machine and class libraries, plus SMTP/IMAP4/POP3 for email. Finally, NCs must support common multimedia formats including JPEG, GIF, WAV, and AU. Optionally, NCs may also support the ISO 7816 SmartCard spec, and credit card payment specs. Notable omissions:
The Impact of the NC Reference Profile on DesignThe NC Reference Profile is a deliberately non-specific document which does not preclude features and functions which are outside the scope of the profile. While the Microsoft NetPC was designed to create a standard platform in order to drive lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), the NC Reference Profile specifies an "architecturally neutral" design. This means:
NC Hardware DesignBecause the NC Reference Profile is "architecturally neutral", there is no standard design for the NC. Multiple, incompatible, proprietary architectures and operating systems from a variety of vendors are referred to as NCs.
Sun's JavaStation is a perfect example of the risks inherent in the "architecturally neutral" NC Reference Profile. The JavaStation is a proprietary, single vendor solution - a Sun Workstation powered by Sun's Java processor running applications on Sun's Java virtual machine, which sits on top of Sun's JavaOS. For $750, customers get a proprietary, incompatible, un-expandable PC with just 8M of memory, and no monitor, or hard disk. (McGarvey) According to the NC Reference Profile, the NC is simply a PC - a non-standard, often significantly under-powered and incompatible PC, but still a PC. THE NETWORK COMPUTING ARCHITECTUREThe Network Computing Architecture (Oracle's name) or the Java Enterprise Computing Architecture (Sun's name) is a three tier model of computing, where data resides on host machines, applications reside on applications servers, and clients (NCs) run only a thin User Interface (UI) layer. The NC is a stateless machine that simply acts as a terminal to run applications and access data on the network. A three tier architecture allowing centralized control is not a bad thing. In fact, Microsoft's "Zero Administration" Initiative for Windows is designed to deliver the best of the PC and the best of the NC - to give the benefits of centrally administered workstations on a corporate network, while preserving the investment in existing PCs. The "Zero Administration" Initiative for Windows also solves performance problems inherent in the NCA by "reflecting" hardware and software state from the PC to the network, facilitating mobile computer usage, and delivering maximum performance to local PCs. Most importantly, this initiative is not tied to a particular hardware platform, which allows customers to benefit on both today's and tomorrow's PCs. Specific features of the "Zero Administration" Initiative for Windows include the following: (Microsoft Corporation)
Windows will become more easily administered through the "Zero Administration" Initiative for Windows. In addition, it is incorrect to assume that a centrally administered network of the type described by Sun and Oracle will automatically lead to lower costs. There are several obvious costs which Sun overlooks, which need to be considered:
In addition to potential additional costs, there are risks inherent in the NCA architecture which are not present in a client-server architecture.
Replacing PCs with NCs and transferring applications from local hard disks to servers simply transfers the expense of managing the PC to the server. Microsoft's "Zero Administration" Initiative for Windows will make PCs fundamentally more manageable, while preserving existing hardware investments and offering customers the choice and flexibility to locate data and applications on either the server or client. The lowest cost option for deploying three tier networks will be Windows-based NetPCs, not the NC. THE JAVA VIRTUAL MACHINE
Figure 2 Win32 API vs. Java API The third key element which the NC Reference Profile mandates is Java. Microsoft's strategy for Java is to deliver the best implementation of the Java programming language and virtual machine, bar none. Today, in fact, the Windows operating systems deliver the fastest and most robust Java virtual machine available, while offering applications developers choices and flexibility. Java is not a component unique to the NC. There is a key difference between Windows-based PCs and the NC, however. In the world of the NC, the Java API constitutes the sole programming API, whereas on Windows, Java is simply one of many languages for writing software. This offers the software developer the best of all worlds - the ability to write applications using Java, and the rich flexibility and diversity of the Win32 (Microsoft's 32 bit programming implement) API. It is key to understand what Sun means by Java, in order to understand what benefits it can offer you. Sun has confused some customers by variously labeling a programming language, a virtual machine, an operating system, and a family of microprocessors with the name Java. To be clear, the benefits of, and enthusiasm for, the Java language do not transfer to other products that happen to share the Java name. The leap from Java the programming language to Java as the applications platform raises several issues:
Figure 3 Microsoft Java Programming Model Offers Choices
Betting your business on a Java-only solution is a risky gamble. You are betting that there will be interesting and competitive Java applications available in the future, the Java programming language and tools will prove to be mainstream, and that the functionality, performance, and robustness deficiencies in the API will be addressed. If you are interested in Java development, a better solution is to use Java in conjunction with the Active component model (Microsoft Corporation). Java applications can be developed today under Windows that take advantage of the rich hardware and software infrastructure found on the Windows-based PC. The best platform for running Java programs is Windows. It offers the fastest and most robust implementation of Java available today, the best development tools, and a proven object model called ActiveX that allows Java applications to integrate with the rest of the computing environment. The rich, flexible, and robust native Windows APIs can be combined with Java programs to produce high quality software with the development benefits associated with the Java language. OPERATING SYSTEMThe final piece in the NC story is the operating system. The NC Reference Profile says nothing about operating systems. Rather, a set of protocols are mandated, and the vendor is free to choose an OS to implement those protocols. Application portability is achieved by requiring that every NC must ship the Java virtual machine. This is in stark contrast to PCs - on the PC the operating system is Windows and Java is one of many development tools. On PCs, developers are not restricted to just Java. Up until today, many vendors have chosen to license the Oracle NC OS. Several other choices are available, however, including NC/OS from SCO (a variant of SCO UNIX), and JavaOS (based on Solaris), from Sun. In fact, Sun has built a special purpose family of processors based on the SPARC architecture for running Java applications natively. Lessons from the UNIX WorldNot surprisingly, given the fact that the minicomputer vendors designed the NC, there are a number of parallels between today's NC architecture and the UNIX architecture.
It follows that customers who buy NCs from multiple vendors will have to support multiple operating systems. Those customers will incur:
Fundamentally, the fragmented OS strategy of the NC eliminates choice, and reduces innovation. With Windows the customer can choose from in excess of 100,000 applications, thousands of peripherals, and thousands of PCs. The phenomenal pace of innovation in the PC marketplace is due to the standardization of systems services and APIs - an advantage which the NC cannot claim. With the NetPC and Microsoft's "Zero Administration" Iinitiative for Windows, the promises of the NC will be delivered in a standards-based framework which leverages customers existing PC investments. CONCLUSIONThe minicomputer vendors have made a number of claims about the NC, the NC architecture, and the Java virtual machine. Specifically, they have said that the NC reduces complexity and cost, increases security and reliability, reduces development time for applications, and eliminates the cost of deploying applications. However, there is no evidence to substantiate these claims, and logic says that they cannot be true. The NC is a vendor specific, non-standard PC, which is incapable of running popular software, and which limits the choices of customers. Although the minicomputer vendors would like you to believe that the NC represents a new computing paradigm, that does not seem to be the case. Betting your business on the NC is a bet that a market, complete with standards, applications software, peripherals, and hardware will emerge for this architecture. Gartner predicts this will take at least five years, but even this may be optimistic. Creating a thriving and viable computing platform is a daunting task. Just ask GO/EO, Apple, SCO, IBM, Commodore, and countless others who have tried over the past decade. The NC Reference Profile makes this task doubly hard, since it doesn't specify any of the necessary standards needed to create a thriving OS platform - device model, APIs, bus architecture, and others. This approach failed to make UNIX a standard in the 1980's. Is there any reason to believe the same approach will succeed this time? It is time to officially declare NC dead. May it rest in peace.
WORKS CITEDBoyns, Mark. Why Java is hot? June 17 1996. Available from URL http://www.sdsu.edu/~boyns/java/mc/time.html. Croft, Adrian. "Age of 'Network Computer' Dawning, Oracle Chief Says." The Detroit News Cyberia. 09 Mar. 1996. Available from URL http://detnews.com/cyberia/daily/oracle.oracle.html. The Gartner Group. Just-In-Time Computer Based Training. Oct. 1996. Available from URL http://www.gartner.com/training/resources/jit.html. McGarvey, Joe. "How Much Will $500 Get You? Not Much." Interactive Week Online: 17 June 1996. Available from URL http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/print/960617/digitdev/col1.htm. Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft Announces Zero Administration Initiative for Windows. 28 Oct. 1996. Available from URL http://www.microsoft.com/corpinfo/press/1996/Oct96/ZAWinpr.htm. ---, Microsoft and Intel Launch NetPC with Industry Leaders. 28 Oct. 1996. Available from URL http://www.microsoft.com/corpinfo/press/1996/Oct96/NETPCpr.htm. ---, The Microsoft Active Platform: Frequently Asked Questions. Oct. 1996. Available from URL http://www.microsoft.com/activex/. Oracle Corporation. The Network Computer ?. 23 Jan. 1996. Available from URL http://www.oracle.com/headlines/html/ncwp.html. Thompson, John M. Network Computer Reference Profile. 20 May 1996. Available from URL http://www.internet.ibm.com/news/thomp.htm.
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