Those companies in the network computing school need not conflict with Microsoft Corp’s view of the fat desktop, they are in two different worlds that could co-exist, so says IBM Corp’s Java evangelist Simon Phipps. Phipps, one of IBM’s dedicated Java team based at its Hursley Park development laboratory near Winchester in the UK, believes the so-called conflicts between Microsoft and the Sun Microsystems Inc/Oracle Corp network computing aren’t even there at the moment, because Microsoft is still in the personal productivity space. He believes that it should be left alone, to run on a personal computer exactly as it always has. All the rest of an enterprise’s applications can then be delivered via the browser metaphor, using Java. If a user needs personal productivity tools such as word processing or spreadsheets, they can continue to use their PC running Windows applications, and access enterprise applications through that PC but via a browser. For those that don’t need anything other than dedicated enterprise applications, the Network Computer, may be the right solution. Phipps is naturally evangelical about Java. The Hursley Park team brought the first two Java licenses into IBM in 1994. And between then and now, the Java word has spread so effectively throughout IBM that Big Blue’s whole future now depends on it, and that according to Carl Symon, the company’s chief executive for the UK and Ireland. According to Phipps, Network Computing is not defined by a piece of hardware or even by a special standard. It is the premise of use any computer, any desktop, but ensure you have a web browser with full support for Java programs, he says. By Java programs, Phipps means any of the sixty or so languages that compile to Java byte code, and that therefore will run on any platform. He believes we are currently riding the Java Tsunami – the tidal wave which builds up under the sea and is not felt until it emerges less than one mile from the shore. A small fishing boat two miles off shore could be completely oblivious to the fact that the Tsunami has been building up, until the wall of wave appears in-shore. Such is the Java movement at the moment, according to Phipps. Many people are out there in their small fishing boats and not noticing it pass under them, but pretty soon it will break with its full force, and then presumably, it may leave many stranded in its wake. Those who believe there is a conflict with Microsoft on the desktop simply need to shift the way they look at the world, Phipps says. And he may well be right. But Hursley Park, a stately home set in its own beautiful grounds about 4 miles from the nearest town, is a million miles from the federal courts of Washington.
