For many people, the fight seems to be PC vs. NC -- the battle between the fat and thin client -- and the simplistic notion that NCs could replace knowledge workers' PCs. But NCs will have a role in corporate America, replacing a 3270 or 5251 terminal or providing customers access to systems without burdening IS with PC support requirements.

In a recently released report, Boston's Yankee Group said that 65 percent of the largest 100 U.S. companies plan to buy NCs in the next two years. Even more exciting, 54 percent of those large companies are evaluating NCs today. And 17 percent have budgeted for NCs this year.

Apparently, the remaining 48 percent are waiting for some software concerns to settle out before it buys NCs. In some cases, corporations are waiting for the Java battle to calm down so they can pick their platform. But in other cases, they are waiting for some basic applications to show up.

That is why Lotusphere was so encouraging. Although Corel (and other small companies) has released Java-based applications that are simple ports of existing software, Lotus took a fresh look at the Java-application market. In its upcoming Kona line, Lotus will release pure Java-based applets that run on any Java virtual machine in 200KB to 400KB of RAM. The Kona applets include a spreadsheet, a simple word processor, a charting utility, graphics applications, a calendar, a personal information manager, a project scheduler, and an e-mail client. (You can read about Lotus' applets at http://kona.lotus.com.) With these serving as the foundation, many corporations can begin to build their solutions.

But even more exciting than the applications is their underlying InfoBus technology, which allows the programs to communicate. For example, an application can have the spreadsheet's numbers linked to the adjacent chart. Change the numbers, the chart dynamically updates. Although this is simple in Windows, it would be a near impossibility on NCs without a common technology for such interapplication communication. (Microsoft does not seem interested in bringing OLE to the NC, assuming it could fit on an NC.)

For NCs, InfoBus appears to offer a common language for these new applications. InfoBus is written entirely in Java and will run on any Java virtual machine.

Within a couple of weeks, Lotus will release the first components of Kona and, with the hopes of making InfoBus a standard, has committed to publish the API. Although Lotus has had trouble setting standards ever since the .WKS file format, it has a very big and rich uncle this time. With IBM's NC commitment and proven record for setting standards, InfoBus has a good chance of succeeding.

Source: Infoworld