The second half of this story didn’t run yesterday due to a production error. Here it is again, this time in its entirety.
IBM Corp, which has had the nascent network computer market more or less to itself in the last year or so, should face stiffer competition through 1998 when – and if – Sun Microsystems Inc and Oracle Corp’s Network Computer Inc subsidiary finally deliver their own full-function NC devices. IBM, whose Network Stations are built for it by Network Computing Devices Inc, says it looks forward to the market momentum other vendors should help create. IBM claims to have shipped tens of thousands of NCs to some 1,500 customers. It will add new functions to connect Network Stations to its AS/400 servers as well as faster processors this year, but says the next quantum leap in NC technology will be the delivery of a Java operating system that will displace the current hodge-podge of proprietary system software vendors currently offer on NCs. JavaOS, which IBM is helping Sun Microsystems Inc lick in to shape, doesn’t look like it’ll debut in products any time before late in the second half of the year. The arrival of JavaOS devices should finally enable customers to construct the type of heterogeneous, multi-vendor networks NC proponents have been banging on about since they invented the concept. Java NCs will operate within end-to-end Java solutions in which Java applets and services can be developed, stored and deployed from any server to any manufacturer’s JavaOS-based network computer. Other software will be required to enable NCs to be managed within mixed PC networks and that’s where IBM’s Network Station Manager program comes in. IBM, Netscape Communications Corp, Sun Microsystems Inc, Oracle Corp and other members of the Network Computer Profile (NCP) group which are trying to encourage the use of common NC technologies and protocols will meet next week in Cupertino, California to extend a basic profile and define how their NC technologies can be managed in mixed networks, how users can be authenticated on the systems and how NCs can be used as mobile computers. IBM’s Network Station Manager will implement the NCP recommendations and Big Blue will begin licensing it to third parties (CI No 3,293). IBM NCs fitted with remote access and mobile computing technologies aren’t expected before the beginning of next year. IBM says it’ll introduce new JavaOS-based NCs alongside Network Stations running IBM and NCD-derived system software but will eventually phase the latter out.
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