Chairman of Oracle Larry Ellison, the champion of the Network Computer, earns this year's Industry Achievement Award. This may seem a premature decision, because it's too early to tell where the Network Computer is going. But it is Ellison's effect on the industry that is being rewarded here, not the machine. And there's no doubt that the Network Computer has had the most significant and beneficial effect on the industry in 1996. It has convinced the industry to take its eyes off the next-processor, next-version upgrade syndrome and refocus on cost of ownership.

As early as October 1995, Ellison was touting the idea of an Internet appliance at International Data Corp.'s European IT forum. The idea immediately had a ripple effect that reached other vendors. IBM followed up with its idea of what an Internet appliance would be. Sun jumped in and offered up Java as the basis for this new type of computer. It quickly took on a more corporate flavor and became the Network Computer.

Early in 1996, Ellison took the concept on the road. While Ellison evangelized, we scoffed and debated. Much of the trade press repeated the $500 price tag like a mantra, as if the entry fee were the sole point of the machine. Some even pinned the success or failure of the Network Computer on how close vendors could get to this target price. The rest wrote off the Network Computer as little more than an attempt to topple the Wintel duopoly. As preceding efforts had failed, so would this one.

All these critics had forgotten one person: the customer. But Ellison and his cohorts hadn't forgotten. Ellison emphasized from the get-go that total cost of ownership and ease of administration would be the reasons corporations would be interested in the Network Computer. IBM's Lou Gerstner and Sun's Scott McNealy reinforced this theme in their talks about the Network Computer. By midyear, lowering the total cost of ownership per desktop became the new industry obsession.

This created a healthy skepticism about PC networks. People started asking themselves why PCs are so difficult to manage, and whether or not these management problems could ever be solved. In response, on April 1, 1996, at WinHEC, Microsoft unveiled its first alternative to the Network Computer, the Simply Interactive PC, aka SIPC, aka PC 97. The April 1 date of the SIPC announcement turned out to be poetic. The PC 97 specification released in September, although interesting, contained little that might suppress interest in the Network Computer. April fools!

Meanwhile, momentum behind the Network Computer continued to build. Even Intel quietly hinted that it might jump on the Network Computer bandwagon. In record time, vendors started to deliver on Ellison's promises by shipping Network Computers in the fourth quarter of 1996.

In a last-ditch effort to stem the tide, Microsoft revealed plans for the NetPC, a low-cost Windows PC that conforms to the so-called zero-administration initiative. (Despite the name, true zero administration isn't even promised.) Then, Microsoft extended Java to be Windows-specific -- a move that fulfilled a prediction I made on the very day the Redmond, Wash., company announced its intention to license Java. (See "Bombs away! Here we go again.")

If Java is undermined, the enabling technology for the Network Computer would be subverted. And the rest, as they say, would be history -- except that it ain't nearly over yet. But whether, or not the Network Computer gets derailed, the fact that it pushed the Wintel alliance to address issues it had largely ignored in the past is of enough benefit to the industry that Ellison's promotion of the concept earns him this award.

Larry Ellison has a reputation for being endowed with an ego the size of Baltimore, and there are people who will no doubt criticize me for expanding his ego even more with this award. They might have to get used to the idea. Ellison has recently been advancing the idea of a server appliance. If this has the same effect on the server industry that the Network Computer had on the idea of clients, these critics may confront Ellison's picture here again next year.

Source: InfoWorld