A coalition of major international institutions, led by some of the world's largest banks, today announced the formation of the Client Networking Computing Coalition, Inc. (CNCC).

These world-wide financial powers issued a call to the leading vendors in the network computing industry to join them to create a comprehensive set of policies, practices, specifications, solutions and management strategies that will encompass the model of client network computing.

Founders of the CNCC include Bank of America, NatWest Bank, Royal Bank of Canada and ABN AMRO. Joining them as Vendor Founders are Sun Microsystems and IBM. Additionally, the founding members have received letters of intent from another five vendors and 14 financial institutions.

The concept behind CNCC has been under development for about six months according to Asa Lanum, managing principal of the CTO Group, Menlo Park, Calif., an industry consultancy.

"The CNCC's goal is to drive practical and immediate implementation of network computing specifications that will allow financial institutions to take full advantage of this technology in the near term. As this is accomplished, CNCC user members will begin to realize a substantial, measurable reductions of the total cost of ownership (TCO) over the system's life-cycle by enabling a notable improvement in usefulness, usability, productivity, management and support," he said.

Lanum went on to describe the CNCC participants' initial activity: "This first-phase study includes a series of pilot projects and deployments, to identify pitfalls, track and codify success factors. The lessons learned will lead to extensive information exchange among the participants."

Lanum, the executive director of CNCC, worked together with Tsvi Gal (presently executive vice president and CIO of ABN AMRO Bank), Chicago, on the initial phases of CNCC development while Gal was senior vice president at Bank of America.

Their shared vision of the need for customer driven standards for network computing led to the establishment of a formal working group of banking and investment companies which, in turn, met with the leading vendors of network computers to encourage them to support the goals of CNCC. The outcome was the "fast track" writing and adoption of defacto standards for network computing practices that can also have far-reaching impact on other vertical industries.

The operative word that defines CNCC is "speed." As Gal put it, "The demand for network computing is undeniable because the payback is indisputable. Given this, we cannot sit back while the industry goes forward with tentative steps towards a series of standards which many take years to become reality; and which may not be specific to our requirements at all. Our mission is to get out in front, identify and specify our needs as customers, then challenge the vendors to produce to our requirements. We think they will."

The result of CNCC's work will be presented publicly for the first time at IT Horizon's '97 Symposium, June 9-11 at the Doubletree (formerly the Red Lion Inn), in San Jose.

IT Horizons '97, sponsored by the UniForum Association of Santa Clara, and the Fisher Center for Management and IT, UC Berkeley, is a combination CIO Summit and NC/NetPC Symposium and Workshop designed to reach senior managers who are, or will be, procuring and installing network computing systems.

"IT Horizons '97 is an ideal venue for CNCC to make public our mission and strategy for moving forward," said Lanum. "Its vendor-neutral content, as designed by UniForum, will give CNCC the proper environment in which to announce and describe our work which is intended to be inclusive of all software and hardware vendors."

Complete descriptions of the sessions and registration information can be found on-line at www.uniforum.org -- "IT Horizons." Attendance at the Symposium is limited to 250.

For more information about the CNCC and IT Horizons '97 contact: Deb Murray, dmurray@uniforum.org, Vice President, Education and Training, UniForum Association, 2901 Tasman Drive, Suite 205, Santa Clara, CA, 408/986-8840, ext. 12 (telephone); 408/986-1645 (fax).