Network Computer, Inc. (NCI), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Oracle Corp., today made a series of announcements that delivers a complete solution for building, deploying and managing low-cost, easy to use network computers. While many vendors have one or two of the necessary components to complete the network computer model, NCI is the first vendor to offer a complete solution - all based on open industry standards.

At Oracle's Open World (OOW) conference in Tokyo, Japan today, NCI announced its first complete software offering. NCI also announced that Philips Electronics Co., NEC Corp. and Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) and others will build hardware devices running NCI's NC software. Intel Corp. also provided 200MHz Pentium chips for the world's largest NC network demonstration at OOW.

"NCI has worked hard to build the best network computer software and deliver affordable, easy to use, and manage devices to the marketplace," said Jerry Baker, CEO of NCI. "The announcements by our partners and business alliances represent the overwhelming industry support we have received and completes the first step in our vision to make network computers an ubiquitous device."

NCI's Products

NCI today announced its network computer software products: NC Desktop, NC Server and NC Card. NC Desktop, the world's first completely HTML and Java-enabled desktop, provides the multimedia software to support a new generation of web-enabled application software. NC Server is the first affordable, turnkey server software for schools, local governments, small businesses and workgroups in corporations. The NC Server consists of NCOS, NCI's low-cost and robust operating system, the NC Services for enabling and administering network computers, and NC Applications, a set of fully functional server-based software with Java and HTML support. Finally, NC Card is an industry standard ISO7816 smart card that provides users secure, personalized access to data and applications located on the network.

NC Applications

NCI's NC is designed to run any Java or HTML enabled application. Today, NCI and Lotus Development Corp. announced they will provide business productivity applications that run on NCI's NC software. This announcement will ensure Lotus' Java-based applets, code-named "Kona," run on NCI's NC software by later this year. Additionally, several of Oracle's key web-enabled software are available with the NC Server including Oracle Interoffice, Composer, Oracle Web Application Server and Oracle Video Server.

NC Hardware Partners

Today NCI expanded their existing list of hardware vendors to include: Philips Electronics Co., NEC Corp., Accton, and DEC. Philips and Acton will license NC Desktop to run on their Intel-based NC clients. Both NEC and DEC will license NCI's software to run on their server hardware. (See additional releases on each company).

NC Systems Integrators

Today NCI announced their first systems integrators, Digital Equipment Corp. and Oracle Corp. Both companies will plan, deploy and support networks based on NCI's NC software for computing environments where reduced system maintenance and cost, and easy-to-use graphical user interfaces are needed.

Open Standards

NCI is focused on developing software based on open industry standards. This commitment to open standards extends to open chipset architectures as well. Currently, NCI's software runs on the ARM, StrongARM and Intel chip architectures. In addition, there are thousands of applications currently available that run on NCI's software because it supports standard HTML and Java. NCI today received broad industry support for its network computer software from leading vendors of Web-enabled software.

About NCI

NCI, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Oracle Corp., develops, licenses and markets a complete suite of software, technology and support services for the network computer including NC Desktop, NC Server and NC Card. With strategic alliances worldwide, NCI's mission is to bring network computing to the corporate, consumer and educational marketplaces. NCI's World Wide Web address is http://www.nc.com.

Source: NCI