The group of companies driving the formation of a common set of specifications for network computers has now swollen beyond the original five, and 13 of them have agreed to meet in January in Cupertino to thrash out a spec and hand it to the Open Group. The original spec for the thin client themselves is largely complete, says TOG. It is based on the Network Computer Reference profile 1.0, now called NCP. The group will be meeting to flesh out specs to deal with servers and the network and overall systems management issues, such has how to you boot up and manage NCs from multiple vendors from a single server. Other issues to be addressed are smart cards and mobile NCs. TOG is readying testing an branding for the NCP. The meeting will be held on January 14- 15 and the following companies have announced their attendance: IBM Corp and its Lotus and Tivoli Systems units, Sun Microsystems Inc, Oracle Corp, Netscape Communications Corp, Corel Computer Corp, Neoware Systems Inc, Novera Inc, Santa Cruz Operation Inc and TriTeal Corp.
