NCs Enter the Open Age

ENT, March 4, 1998 by Stephen Swoyer

By many accounts, one of the most prohibiting impediments to the acceptance of the network computer (NC) or thin client in the enterprise has been the lack of a clear strategy and standard architecture among NC vendors. In late January, however, the fragmented visions of the most important NC players moved toward consolidation with the announcement that the industry standardization of the NC will be managed through the Open Group (Cambridge, Mass.), an industry standards consortium.

"To help establish buyer confidence in the network computer, the leading vendors have been working through the Open Group, which will enable IT buyers to make better and safer choices when investing in network computers," says James de Raeve, managing director of specifications, testing and branding at the Open Group.

While not expressing surprise at the move, given the extremely fragmented nature of the NC marketplace, James Staten, an industry analyst with market research and industry consulting firm Dataquest (San Jose, Calif.), questions the concept of a standardized NC model. "I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to have a unified specification, because the NC concept works differently in different deployments," he explains. "I would say that it makes sense to have a standardized NC architecture in point-of-sale systems, for example."

The Open Group will manage version 1.0 of the Network Computer Profile, a guideline for NC standards that has been adopted by a number of vendors. The Open Group also indicated that its network computer working group -- which includes industry heavyweights IBM Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Oracle Corp. -- has finalized specifications for version 2.0 of the Network Computer Profile. Accordingly, the Network Computer Profile 2.0 will include support for HTML 4.0, DHCP and TFTP for booting support; CORBA 2.1 for distributed object access; and VRML for advanced modeling and rendering. The Network Computer Profile 2.0 will also include e-mail client functionality and a file system for Java applications.

The Open Group's de Raeve maintains that his organization will help to drive the NC standards process and contribute to the stability and uniformity of NC-based products. "Our central role within this market will help ensure that all the standardization work being carried out by both vendors and other consortiums will contribute to [product stability] in a timely and consistent fashion," he asserts.

But according to Dataquest's Staten, NC vendors have a tough road ahead of them. "At this point the NC is such a non-event that there's really not a need to create standards and be concerned about those kinds of issues," he contends. "[NC vendors] need to be more concerned about developing products that meet customer needs and satisfy customer demands."