The Oracle speaks

AN innocuous small black box may be set to turn the computing upside down. The Network Computer (NC), a "softwareless" machine which Oracle's chief executive Larry Ellison has been brandishing like a piece of digital kryptonite before supernerd Bill Gates, will at last become reality in three months' time, when Oracle promises to begin shipping it.

The box has moved from concept to the real world with the speed Ellison famously can muster when he decides he likes an idea: what Larry wants, Larry gets The Testarossa driving Eastern art collector, whose row of glittering corporate buildings dominates the flat bay shorelands at the northern end of Silicon Valley, has built his massive software firm by anticipating market trends.

This time, he figures consumers are tired of buying pricey software, and exasperated that their hardware is obsolete five minutes after purchase. "The introduction of a new operating system is not a major cultural event," he said while touting the NC recently, in a broadside at Microsoft's superhyped Windows 95 launch. Ellison hopes the souls of those who own 386 chip machines running passe versions of Windows will be deeply moved by the NC concept. And thus, Chairman Bill is not pleased.

Gates and Ellison, have been exchanging volleys for the past year over the subject of the NC. Microsoft's Web pages currently carry an essay by Gates poo-pooing plans for "replacing PCs with special purpose terminals that draw information from centralised servers . . . it's easy to paint a rosy picture when details aren't in focus ... I'm betting on the PC, as I always have ...

However, analysts agree that Microsoft now in catch up mode - seriously misunderstood the commercial significance of the Internet and Web. The Network Computer is a child of the world the Internet has created, "and its time may indeed have come.

The NC will run on any platform; in other words, operating systems are meaningless. Because the NC is linked to powerful servers, the desktop terminal draws on the vast strength of its server. RAM and software become irrelevant as documents and programs are held elsewhere, and called up as needed.

When Ellison first began pushing the idea of a cheap, uncomplicated piece of hardware that, would give quick Net access, many were sceptical. Why would people buy a machine just for the Internet when a PC can do so much more? A similar argument has kept down sales of games consoles such as Sony's PlayStation. But, as Ellison argued in his recent keynote talk at California's Internet World 96 (the launching ground for the year's top corporate announcements), in theory the NC will do much more than the average PC at a fraction of the cost.

Most home and business users need a computer for three tasks, he said: word processing, spreadsheets and Net access. The NC delivers all three. Its software will always be the latest release - no need to go out and rebuy the entire application for the latest improvements. "In other words, there's no need to buy Microsoft Office. Then buy Microsoft Office again. Then buy it again," he said.

He pointed out that in an age of digital bits, it was ridiculous to be supplying software in discrete boxes on store shelves rather than over a network pipe.

"Why would you ever deliver bits using trucks?" he asked. "It's a sign of how primitive our industry is yet today."

With the advent of Sun's open system programming language Java, and the explosion of the Internet, there is a major drive towards making systems irrelevant, and platformless software delivery at a mouse click is the obvious result. It all seemed a bit pie in the sky last year, but a year is a Silicon Valley lifetime, and the Internet has changed the playing field almost beyond recognition.

Ellison's strategy is intriguing, given that Oracle's lifeblood is its database software, but he says he will stake Oracle's fortunes on its server expertise, as servers become the NC backbone. The standards based NC, says Ellison, can even be built by anyone, as Oracle has published the specifications. Sun is already eyeing the market, and aims to bring out its own NC in the autumn.

At the Internet World show, Ellison's abrasively amusing style of puncturing corporate egos and sniping at others' products drew some gasps from the crowd of 5,000. But he has a showman's knack for making challenging concepts seem like self evident truths. He nonchalantly gave conceptual and technical details, then ran a demonstration for an ultimately impressed audience.

His final demo was to send an email message back to the Oracle head office. "Soon there will be more NC than PC manufacturers," he typed. Up came a dialogue box: "Your message has been sent." Indeed it has.