Ray Lane on network computing - Oracle Pres and COO - Company Business and Marketing - Cover Story - Interview

Software Magazine, Jan, 1997 by Patrick Porter

Oracle Corp. President and Chief Operating Officer Ray Lane spoke recently with Software Magazine Editor-in-Chief Patrick Porter about Oracle's efforts to merge client/server, the Internet and distributed object technology with its Network Computing Architecture. What follows are excerpts from that interview. Q: It seems there's a bit of confusion in the marketplace between the network computer, which is an appliance, and the network computing architecture, which is an infrastructure play.

A: The network computing architecture is a three-tier architecture. In traditional two-tier client/server we had the client tier, which had presentation, user interface and the tool or application together, and the second tier was the database server. What NCA does is separate that client component into two tiers: One is the presentation and the other is the application or the tool that runs that application -- making a three-tier architecture. You can use different operating system and hardware platform technologies to operate it. If the user interface is all you have on your first tier on the desktop, all you need is a very small operating system and a very small network computer or Java station -- "thin client" is probably the most universal term and only a small amount of memory, probably a very fast processor, no disk and no persistent storage on the desktop. I move the application to a server so I give it a lot more resources. I give it a large operating system, I give it a lot of persistent disk storage, but I move that complexity back into the network where it can be managed better than the desktop. Think about it: When you put all this resource on the desktop somebody has to manage it and typically the users themselves are the least qualified to do it.

Q: I want to be absolutely clear about one thing: The network computer is supported by the Network Computing Architecture and in a sense it gives the fullest expression to the network computing paradigm, but it's really not a necessary condition of the NCA, which would also support a fat client paradigm . . .

A: That's right.

Q: A Wintel fat client, if necessary.

A: All it has to do is take applications and present them to you. So if it is a Word or Excel or an order fulfillment application, whatever the application is, it has to be presented in a very easy-to-use graphical interface. That's all the presentation layer does. If you want to use Windows 95 or Windows NT to do that, you can do it and it makes a very good user interface. No problem. The drawback is that you've spent too much money to get that capability. You could get that capability for one-fifth or less of the cost. Then the other layers work exactly the same way. In the client/server model if you keep the application on the desktop you need NT or you need Windows 95. As soon as you take it out you don't need it. You are using such a small portion of the resource that you have to think, gee, why would I spend this much money just to get presentation on the desktop?

Q: Analysts worry that when you push the complexity back into the network you also are pushing the cost back into the network. So you take this $12,000 annual administration cost per desktop and maybe you're just repositioning that cost onto the server.

A: That's correct. You are. They're absolutely right. But you're spreading it over a usage base as opposed to a user base. So now I am going to move it back into the network and I maintain one copy of NT per server as opposed to 20 copies of NT, one for each client. So I've gained economies of scale and put it in the hands of professionals who know how to do it, how to manage that environment, the network and the servers, and I've reduced that cost. So if you compare the cost of the NC, which a lot of people do, and say, okay, an NC costs $500 and let me compare that to Gartner's estimate of $12,000 to maintain the desktop -- that's an unfair comparison. It's silly to make it. So take the cost of managing the NC and the servers behind the NC back in the network and then compute the cost of maintaining an NC and the cost will probably be about $2,500 per NC. So the right way to evaluate it is take whatever number you want to use for the PC -- Gartner's number of $12,000, Intel's number of $8,000 -- and compare that to $2,500 to $3,000 per NC to manage the NC environment. That's still a fourth of the cost.

Q: When will Oracle retool all its applications for NCA and the Web?

A: When you say retooling, the beauty of this thing is that as long as the application is built with Developer 2000, then I know I can convert the application to a thin client almost immediately. All I need is the introduction of a tool called Web Forms or Web Cartridge. We call it both things. Web Forms is the thin client interface to the Developer toolset that allows you to move Developer to the server and then have presentation on a thin client. So there is virtually nothing that we have to do other than implement the thin client with Web Forms on it. Web Forms goes into production at the end of February. My expectation is we would be transferring all of our applications starting then, at the end of February.