Corporate.Net
Are NCs
Really Worth The Price Of Admission?
By Dave Molta
Remember the first time you rode a roller coaster? Whether or not you enjoyed it, you probably would have to admit that it was exciting. And if you're anything like us, somewhere along the way, a thought popped into your head. You wondered--and hoped--that who ever was responsible for designing and managing this ride had his act
together because your life depended on it. Although your life may not be at stake, the idea of entrusting all your computing tasks to a network-based system, a network computer (NC), is more than a little scary. If it's scary for you, chances are that it's unsettling for your users as
well.
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The NC is coming, make no mistake about it, and it will be embraced by many managers as the solution to out-of-control costs associated with the conventional desktop computing paradigm. To some, the term personal computer conjures up positive images of creativity, ease of use, power and independence. But for many IS administrators--and more important, for their managers--a bottom-line analysis calls for a novel approach that addresses the cost of ownership issue head on.
Advocates of the NC carry the total cost of ownership (TCO) banner as their rally flag. Centralize control of the desktop, they say, and you can de
liver more efficient services, without sacrificing functionality. If you told your boss you could save thousands of dollars annually per desktop by implementing NCs, you'd get some attention, right? So what's the catch?
 Skeptics will t
ell you it will never work. Very few front-line employees are ready for the roller-coaster ride associated with a radical makeover of their desktop environment, especially if the ticket for all the excitement is a loss of control, performance and flexibility. No matter how you spin this one, it's tough to make the case that the result of replacing your Pentium PC with an NC will be a better computing environment. Better for whom? is the question. A more cost-effective environment? Probably. An environment that provides the basic services that you've come to depend upon? Maybe. A more powerful environment? Frankly, we doubt it.
We've been considering these issues in the pages of Network
Computing for quite some time, in Sneak Previews and columns, and at our lab sites, where we see significant interest in this technology by our host organizations. So we set out to evaluate both the idea behind the NC and the initial implementations that are beginning to make their way off assembly lines.
Our first conclusion: This is an immature technology struggling for a clear identity. Early proponents, including Oracle Corp. and Sun Microsystems, made it sound like a wholesale replacement for PCs, both at home and in the office. It may even bring about the end of Microsoft Corp. as we know it. Although you'll still hear outrageous claims of 100 million NCs by decade's end, for the most part, cooler heads have prevailed.
The NC is a niche product, but one that is destined to play a significant role in a huge market. Rational estimates suggest that NCs may be found on anywhere from 5 percent to 20 percent of user desktops by the year 2000. That doesn't sound like a revolution, but it's enough to g
et the attention of the major players on both sides of the aisle. Sun and IBM Corp., for example, are investing heavily in NC technologies, and they report significant demand from large accounts. Chipmakers like National Semiconductor Corp. have announced plans to develop "NCs on a chip"--further indication that there's some
mass in the market. Microsoft and Intel Corp., with vocal support from Compaq Computer Corp., Dell Computer Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co., have developed a counteroffensive in the form of the NetPC and zero-administration software initiatives. One way or another, this technology is going to affect you.
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