The Online REPORTER
WEEKLY DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERNET FRONT
November 4-8 1996 Issue No 23
SANGA PROMISES JAVA "BROWSERWARE" TO OEMS
Sanga Corp is promising a kind of Java groupware package in January which it will most likely sell through OEM partners.
The eight-month old company is talking to unnamed software vendors about licensing the software, which is derived from its current offering, Sanga Pages, which the Burlington, Massachusetts company claims is the first application to be written entirely in Java and use the JDBC standard. It dubs it "browserware."
Sanga Pages is a suite of components to write applications to link to and use legacy data. It has the usual components: a client, form design, view design, scripting, e-mail and so on.
Sanga CEO Shane Maine reckons the software industry hasn't yet woken up to the effect the network computer will have on it, unlike some of the hardware industry. As Sun Microsystems Inc CEO Scott McNealy talks about the NC being like having to know how to program your switch before being able to use the phone, well, Maine reckons software still hasn't evolved to suit those erstwhile phone users.
With the browserware launch in January, Sanga will divvy up its software into three: a shrink-wrapped package that may or may not have its own name on it and will be sold to ISVs and large corporations to do with what they will; a set of components, and a component assembly tool. Right now, Sanga is the set of components and the assembly tool, but the components themselves are set to change before the release.
Sanga's going to add more scripting built into the components, so for instance a button to initiate a foreign exchange trade might have a lot of the intelligence for that trade contained within.
Sanga Corp is another potential computer success story with its origin in fast food. From a meeting at a McDonalds last March where CEO Shane Maine and his brother Shaun were chatting with a friend, Mark Lussier, who used to be a software engineer at Lotus, pondering as to what would be the next big thing in the computer industry, as you do. Lussier suggested something like Notes in Java, and Maine promised that if it could be done, he'd fund the development and distribute it.
And a few junk food dinners later, Sanga Pages is the first step down that road. www.sangacorp.com
IBM, SUN TURN TO PLANETWORKS FOR JAVA MIDDLEWARE TOOLS
New York City OLTP integrator Tangent International Inc has created a Java-enabled version of its Distributed Computing Integrator (DCI) front-end development tool called Interspace, which IBM Corp and Sun Microsystems Inc will sell packaged with other middleware tools following their cross-licensing deal on MQSeries, CICS and Java.
In fact IBM and Sun are part-funding the development of Interspace through a new Tangent unit called Planetworks that will carry the company's Java product lines. They're effectively turning Java front-end application development for their shared middleware components over to Tangent.
DCI is a PowerBuilder extension for creating CICS, MQSeries, Tuxedo and Top End applications that has been built in conjunction with Powersoft, IBM, Novell, and AT&T. It has been extended to support Netscape, Visual Basic, SQLWindows front-ends and now Java via Interspace. Developers can use their Java programming tools of choice with Interspace, including Symantec or Borland; Interspace plugs the middleware services into the application.
FORTHCOMING FALCON
IBM, Sun and Planetworks will ship an Interspace bundle by year-end that will include Sun's Java development software; Interspace; CICS and MQSeries clients for multiple platforms; CICS and MQSeries server software for Solaris; and the CICS Gateway for Java. A two-user licence starts at $5,000 on Solaris, AIX and NT.
IBM MQSeries architect Robert Drew says that without Interspace developers have to write a server component in C, develop Java applications and create CICS and MQSeries class libraries or write others that can access CICS and MQSeries from C on the Web server. Planetworks thinks that between them the three companies can ship 30,000 copies of Interspace in six to nine months. Planetworks will create a version of Interspace for use with Microsoft's forthcoming Falcon message queuing system. Level 8 Systems Inc is now beta testing its Falcon-to-MQSeries gateway.
JAVASCRIPT IMPLEMENTATIONS TO BE BROUGHT INTO LINE
Fears that multiple implementations of Netscape Communications Corp's JavaScript blend of the LiveScript scripting language and Java are getting out of step and leading to incompatible Web environments have prompted the creation of a JavaScript reference specification and JavaScript 1.1 implementation, now available to Netscape One developer licensees.
Microsoft Corp and Borland International, which created their own versions of JavaScript - Redmond integrating it with COM - are expected to bring their implementations into line soon.
Netscape submitted its spec to the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) for standardization a couple of weeks back after W3C and IETF turned the thing down claiming not to be in the language business and also to be overworked.
JavaSoft and SunSoft claim lack of a spec has held up their promised support for JavaScript in their products. This has meant that Java environments such as the HotJava browser which runs on Sun's shiny new JavaStation (see page 2) cannot support Web pages created with JavaScript.
While Java is used by programmers to create new objects and applets, JavaScript was designed for use by HTML developers to script - or add interactive features - to the behavior of objects running on either the client or the server. Problem is that the rise of the intranet has pushed JavaScript into use as a full-blown client-server development product, not just a scripting language, Netscape says.
The relationship between Java and JavaScript is described by Netscape as
analogous to that between OCX OLE controls and Visual Basic. Netscape says it's now documenting the 300,000-odd Web pages it reckons use JavaScript to figure out what kinds of differences their implementations contain them are so it can support them in future versions of JavaScript. Netscape reckons the reference implementation accommodates 98% of existing JavaScript code and it's now porting the environment to its server products. The forthcoming Communicator suite will use a JavaScript 1.2 implementation.
SUN GETS THE NETWORK COMPUTER BATTLE STARTED: SHIFT HAPPENS?
The era, if that is what it can be called, of network computers finally got underway last week when Sun Microsystems Inc rolled out its big guns in New York full of hyperbole and gags and even a few computers. Sun CEO Scott McNealy brandished a Star 7 handheld computer, that the First Person division of Sun built back in 1992, declaring it the "world's first network computer." First Person was established to win a chunk of the TV set-top box market that hasn't taken off, and subsequently melted back into Sun, when the operating system called Oak it was building for the set-top devices found it's purpose. The niche turned out to be network computers and the language was renamed Java.
McNealy reckons Java computing, as Sun likes to call the whole affair, represents the third phase for the company; the first two being workstations and enterprise servers. It is ironic that Sun, the company which shunned the diskless PC and X terminal businesses in the early 1990s, insisting they were not the future of computing, is now the one shouting from the rooftops that diskless thin client are the way forward. The difference this time around is Java.
Sun duly announced the JavaStation Network Computer at its self-styled 'Independence Day' event in New York last week, together with Netra j servers and software necessary to run it.
And for a few months it will only be Sun servers that can support the JavaStation, at least until a common boot protocol for NC devices is agreed upon by the companies behind the original NC Reference Profile: Sun, IBM, Oracle, Netscape, Apple and their followers. Nobody of course would venture when that might be, but Gene Banman, VP and general manager of Sun's desktop systems group responsible for the device needs it to write a spec that third parties will use to configure their server software to boot JavaStations.
Sun is of course out to destroy the WinTel desktop monopoly with reduced cost of ownership NC devices and will need all the help it can get from other vendors.
The client
The JavaStation uses a 100MHz 32-bit microSparc II RISC and starts at $742 with 8Mb RAM, keyboard and a mouse. There are two models; the desktop "coffee maker," a curious looking affair; "looks like an earthquake doesn't it?" said Sun CEO Scott McNealy. There's also a more conventional brick-shaped design which can be hidden away in kiosks and such.
A coffee maker with a 14" monitor goes for $1,000 and $1,565 buys JavaStation with a more realistic 16Mb RAM and a 17" monitor. Being an NC it has no slots, no hard or floppy and no CD-ROM, but supports up to 64Mb of memory and 10-baseT Ethernet. Flash RAM will be added sometime next year for dial-up and remote users along with 100Mb/sec - 10/100-BaseT Ethernet - PPP plus other networking options including ISDN around the middle of next year.
All the software, including the JavaOS, HotJava browser and customizable HotJava Views user environment - which with email, HTML browser, calendaring and name directory looks like a low-grade version to Netscape Communications Corp's next-generation Communicator client announced a couple of weeks back - is stored on the server.
The server
Currently there are two ways to deploy JavaStations. Either buy one of the of the existing boxes Sun has pre-configured with a new
Netra j internet and Java software, or upgrade existing Solaris servers with a new Solaris 2.5.1 internet server supplement which includes a Java virtual machine, WebNFS and a bootp server. Sun's created Netra j versions of the microSparc SparcStation 4, both uniprocessor and SMP UltraSparc desktops, the model 5000 deskside and 4000 rackmount SMP Ultra Enterprise servers.
Netra j software is a superset of the Netra i internet server software - including Netscape Enterprise Server - plus SunSoft's JavaWorkshop development and management tools (a just-in-time compiler is coming), an IMAP4 email client and IBM 3270 terminal emulation and mainframe connectivity software from Open Connect Systems.
Netra j servers start at $7,700 for a SparcStation 4-based package supporting up to 50 devices, rising to around $200,000 for an Ultra Enterprise 5000 offering, capable of supporting thousands of NCs according to Sun. Shipments to large customers begin in December with volumes due early next year.
The applications
On the applications front Netscape's Navio Communications Corp unit is re-writing Navigator in Java for JavaStation, and Corel's Office for Java and Applix Inc's Anyware will ship in demo form, while Oracle's Java-based business applications suite will ship when it's ready next year. The name and other details of the suite will be announced by Oracle during this week.
Sun claims more than 450 ISVs are writing applications in Java, and won support from systems integrators including Andersen Consulting, Cambridge Technology Partners and EDS, and existing customers including First Union National Bank, Kodak, BT and CSX.
Sun showed the JavaStation booting from a Netra j and updating the same application across a Sparcstation, Power Mac, Network Computing Devices Inc NC and a PC running Windows NT. While at present no third party server can boot a JavaStation, the Netras can supposedly start any NC.
Sun's customary tilt at Microsoft included a version of Apple's famous 1984-
inspired commercial for the Mac introduction in which Big Brother was replaced with a Bill Gates look-alike shouting "More is more! Excess is beautiful! Send me a check!" "How about we run it on MSNBC?" quipped McNealy.
SUNSOFT BUYS-IN APPLET BUILDING TOOLS, READIES JIT
SunSoft's contribution to the JavaStation festivities included additional Java application development, compilation and deployment tools in a new version of its JavaWorkshop programming suite, plus Java management tools and Java-to-Corba connectivity.
New in a revised Java WorkShop will be the anticipated drag and drop Project Studio development software which can be used to create Java apps from pre-built Java Beans-based components. The technology, which is not Sun's own but licensed from a company it declined to name, includes a visual assembly tool with charts, graphs, forms-based database access and spreadsheets, plus an HTML authoring and publishing tool. It's got shared white board and chat components too.
Ice Tea, the Java-to-C/C++ middleware for connecting Java clients, applets and objects to back-end legacy applications over TCP/IP networks will also be included. The idea is that users will click on HTML links on a Web page, Ice Tea will go off and get Java classes that will open TCP/IP connections back to the server application. Project Studio and Ice-T are due by mid-1997. The new software will go up on Macintosh as well as Microsoft and Solaris environments.
Project Speedway is a set of tools and compilers for tuning Java application performance on Solaris, Win32 and Macintosh. SunSoft's own JIT compilers and a new version of the JDK javac compiler claimed to compile one million lines of code per second are due by year-end. Native server-side Java compilers that will turn machine-independent Java byte code into persistent machine code, presumably for Sparc microJava processors, are due second half of 1997.
There'll be additional Java virtual machines with improved garbage collection, synchronization, locking and exception handling. Joe 1.0, Sun's Java object request broker which ties Java clients to back-end object environments is now also available. Solstice Enterprise Manager is being re-written in Java and will support JMAPI by summer 1997. Version 2.0 of the IMAP4-based Solstice Internet Mail Server supporting email clients such as HotJava Views on the JavaStations and other NC devices is $500; due in 60 days.
Lotus plays its Domino hand with Notes in the background
IBM Corp's Lotus Development Corp is finally getting its act together regarding its Web-enabled Notes, and now it has decided to combine its Notes and Domino server offerings as a single product under the name Lotus Domino 4.5, to be released next year.
Powered by Notes, the new product is aimed at emphasising Lotus' Internet capabilities and simplifying its marketing. Some options that were previously available separately will now come with Domino, and the price will increase as a consequence.
Lotus is also making clustering and partitioning software generally available, having sold it to telecommunications customers for two years. And Lotus will also introduce a client product called Weblicator that works with browsers, adding agent functions so users can fetch selected pages, categorize and index them and work with them off-line. It's essentially a lot of the Notes and Organizer technology unbundled and put into a standards-based client.
The Domino 4.5 server will cost $1,000 for a single processor version, up from $500, and $3,000 for the SMP version, up from $2,300 previously. It's available from January 1. The Advanced Services option, which adds clustering, server partitioning and usage tracking and billing costs a further $1,000 per server, and will be available with Domino 4.5. With Domino Server 4.5, Lotus will also make available licenses for its Domino Mail Access, so that mailboxes can be hosted on Domino servers and accessible via any standard e-mail package supporting MAPI or POP3, as well as Notes. It will charge $35 per mailbox. The prices will increase, but so will the functions.
Domino.Action, previously know as Net.Action will now come as standard. It's a set of Web design templates, the ability to integrate graphics, video and sound, workflow for the creation of site content, client access for the creation of Web sites and the integration of the Notes search engine into Web sites. The SMTP message transfer agent will now come as standard also, as will POP3 support and calendaring and scheduling software, largely derived from Lotus Organizer.
Lotus Weblicator brings a lot of the functions previously available in standard Notes clients to standard browsers. This includes persistent storage in a database, creating local copies of Web pages, maintaining the links and full functionality, rather than merely caching them. Web agents are also included with built-in monitors to retrieve and update pre-defined pages and for off-line HTML forms authoring. Weblicator also supports bi-directional IP-based replication between a Domino server and any browser. It will be available on Windows 95 and NT in the first quarter 1997, with a beta up on www.lotus.com before the year-end, for $30.
DEC SUES ALTAVISTA
Seven months after it purchased the rights to the name AltaVista from Campell, California's AltaVista Technology Inc (ATI), DEC is turning around and suing them, for an undetermined amount, over what it alleges are trademark infringements.
For some reason - and neither DEC nor ATI will say why - the original deal left ATI with the rights to the name "Altavista Technologies, Inc" and, more significantly, to the Web domain "altavista.com". In retrospect, not securing the domain name for an Internet search engine seems like a pretty egregious oversight.
According to DEC's complaint, ATI has, essentially, been representing its site as DEC's AltaVista site and has advertised software and ad space on the site under the "AltaVista", rather than "AltaVista Technology Inc" name. The complaint adds that ATI ran a banner on its site that said, "click here for advertising information - over 9m impressions every month!". An ATI spokesperson was evasive as to how many hits altavista.com has been getting, admitting only that it was "less than a million per day". DEC says it's been trying, without success, since May to get ATI to end these practices. ATI says the lawsuit is entirely without merit.
NETSCAPE MAKES UP WITH ORACLE THROUGH NEW ALLIANCE
Oracle Corp and Netscape Communications Corp put their recent tiffs behind them by announcing a strategic alliance, whereby Netscape will do a version of its SuiteSpot and LiveWire Pro servers bundled with Oracle, which will be the only database it bundles with its Merchant, Publishing and Community Systems application-specific servers.
Also, Navigator 3.0 will be the exclusive third-party browser with the operating environment on the Intel-based version of Oracle's Network Computers, due some time in the first half of next year.
The server agreement appears to mean that Netscape has gone back on its 1995 deal with Informix Software Corp to make it its preferred database partner. At the time Netscape co-founder and senior vice president of technology Marc Andreessen said that "it is clear to us that Informix is the technical leader."
Caught a bit off guard, it took Informix a while to get its wits about it, but it responded later the same day claiming the agreement was little but posturing, packaging and repositioning. Netscape sells Informix versions of SuiteSpot and LivewirePro in both development and deployment configurations; the Oracle implementations will be development products only and the customer will have to go back to Oracle for additional deployment licenses, Informix claims.
Informix says it has 10 engineers on site at Netscape compared to Oracle's one and that further Netscape Appfoundry applets, which sit on top of Informix, will be announced in the next 30 to 60 days. Confusingly Netscape later told us it was still working to integrate Informix with Community, Merchant and Publishing System and that it will supply Informix to customers for use with Netscape Applications if required, which seems to fly in the face of the announcement.
Informix hit back saying Oracle's decision to bundle Netscape Navigator 3.0 as the browser on its forthcoming NC is clearly an indication that "Oracle has failed with its PowerBrowser" Web browser. Oracle was talking up its new strategic alliance with Netscape Communications Corp whereby Netscape Navigator 3.0 will be the exclusive third-party browser with the operating environment on the Intel-based version of Oracle's NC's, due some time in the first half of next year. The impact on Netscape's business is entirely dependent on the NC hardware manufacturers, the names of which Oracle will announce on November 4.
WINSOCK V2 COMING SOON
Following Stardust Technologies-hosted meetings last week in San Jose to finalize the Winsock 2 specification, Microsoft says it will be putting a "release candidate" of the software on its Web site by the middle of this month, with a shipping version available in the first quarter 1997. It will be included in the Win32 software development kit in the form of one large self-extracting file.
In fact, the spec was ratified last August and is already shipping in NT 4.0, but a fair amount of interoperability testing and general tweaking is required to make it compatible with WinSock 1.1. Compatibility will come in the form of a WinSock 1.1 DLL, which will plug into the WinSock 2 DLL.
The new spec allows developers to write their own customized, value-added (and, Stardust assures, fully interoperable) modules at the transport service layer or the name space service provider layer. Novell, for example, has implemented an NDS name service provider module.
Stardust's CTO Martin Hall says he realizes interoperability problems with WinSock 2 would have far greater repercussions today than they did with the WinSock 1.1. He says, however, that the migration to WinSock 2 will not be a nightmare because, unlike WinSock 1.1, the spec has been open from the start and rigorously tested since day one. Microsoft promises that Memphis will take care of all DLL upgrades automatically. WinSock 2 will enable an alphabet soup of protocols, including: RSVP, RTP, ATM, SSL - which Microsoft says, will absorb its own PCT protocol - IP multicast, IPX/SPX, DECnet, OSI, DNS, NIS, NDS, and LDAP. www.stardust.com
TANDEM BETS ITS FUTURE ON INTERNET TRANSACTIONS...
Tandem Computers Inc, seeking to transform its business from online transaction processing to Internet transaction processing, has put the seal on its commitment to Redmond and hit the ground with the promised ServerNet versions of its Mips-based Himalaya parallel processors running NonStop, plus the ServerNet-based Intel/NT boxes all of which can be clustered together.
There are six iTP Solution Server software environments; Commerce Server, Media, Messaging, CTI, Intranet and Matrix. iTP Commerce Server enables secure business to consumer transactions on the Internet, with high bandwidth to support interfaces such as virtual reality and real-time video. Media server enables distribution of digital media such as electronic catalogs, music, and large databases, including pay-per-use, or micropayment capability.
Messaging includes secure movement of mail, fax and paging messages. CTI, computer telephony integration, enables companies to run Internet-based call centers, Intranet Server is for internal corporate intranets, and the Matrix Server enables integration of legacy, off the shelf and custom applications, based on message switching technology. The iTP servers support Secure Sockets Layer protocol, and use the Tandem Atalla subsidiary's Websafe2 hardware encryption and management for RSA and DES digital signatures and certificates.
The S-Series is the first deployment of the company's ServerNet connectivity product in its NonStop architecture, which still accounts for 70% of the company's revenues. Tandem says S-Series incorporates the first departure from its basic Non Stop architecture since 1976. The series includes two Mips RISC-based NonStop Himalaya servers and Intel-based Windows NT servers. Both families incorporate ServerNet and can be arranged into the promised System Area Network arrangements, or SANs.
The NT servers - S100 and S1000 - initially include Tandem's own CAS cluster availability software but will migrate to Microsoft's Wolfpack clustering when it is available next year. The company is also introducing the S100FT and S1000FTm a fault tolerant two-node version slated for delivery in early 1997. The Himalaya family, the S7000 and the S70000 said to be fully compatible with the previous K-Series servers. The S7000 uses the R4400 150Mhz processor and S70000 200 Mhz R10000s. The NT S-Series uses 200Mhz Pentium Pros processors, S100 providing one or two-way symmetric multiprocessing, the S1000 one to four way. They are available immediately. The S100 low end NT server starts at less than $9,000 and the entry level Himalaya will cost $69,500.
...BACKS INTERVAL INC FOR ITS INTERNET METERING SKILLS
Its experience with Anamartic Ltd, the wafer-scale memory chip designer that didn't quite deliver on its promise, has not put Tandem Computers Inc off new companies with challengingly new technologies, and Tandem has taken a shine to Austin, Texas-based Interval Inc (not to be confused with Paul Allen's Interval Research in Palo Alto).
The McGuffin or unique selling proposition at Interval is the concept of Internet metering, and the company is working on software that will meter usage and on that basis take care of intelligent digital asset and content rights management and electronic payments, including micropayments. Banker's Trust Inc is equally impressed, and joins Verity Inc and Tandem in contributing to Interval's most recent venture capital round, in which Tandem tossed $1.25m into the pot.
Tandem will work with the Austin, Texas company in an alliance that aims to create a mutually-beneficial business environment on the Internet for consumers and businesses. The two plan to deliver a product architecture enabling metered consumption of information, software and any other form of digital content while ensuring appropriate payment is received for its use. Pay-per-use capabilities will be supported via a micropayments system. The products will address administration of usage rights, protected redistribution, and assured receipt of payment, automating copyright, contract and licensing compliance for customers.
TANDEM, INFORMIX, SLY, ARNIE, BRUCE AND DEMI GO ONLINE
As part of its quest to turn itself from an online transaction processing company to an Internet transaction processor and raise its profile in the burgeoning Internet world, Tandem Computers Inc has set up a new company with Informix Corp and unlikely bedfellow, celebrity-owned restaurant chain Planet Hollywood.
The new company, Planet Hollywood Online Inc, will, look at the distribution of Hollywood-style high value content such as movies and music, over the Internet. Details of the company's offerings are as yet unclear, but it would appear that it will be launching a Hollywood-style Web site. It is also talking about helping film production companies to use the Internet as a distribution vehicle.
Planet Hollywood, owned by movie stars Sylvestor Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, is also said to make two thirds of its revenue from merchandising, and only one third from the food and drink side. It therefore looks likely that it will use the new company to further expand this side of the business.
REDMOND LURES ISPS INTO NEW SUPPORT PROGRAM
Microsoft Corp has set up a support program for Internet service providers, using a classic carrot and stick approach to get them to sign up. The carrot is a listing on the Microsoft Hosting Service referral Web site, the site Redmond set up to automatically guide new users to ISPs in their local area. The stick's the requirement that any ISP in the Internet Service Provider Program who offers web hosting has to use NT Server 4.0 and Internet Information Server as well as support the FrontPage server extensions.
ISPs also have to agree to distribute Internet Explorer - Redmond gives them a royalty-free license to the browser as well as to the Explorer Administration Kit.
ANTARES ALLIANCE EDGE IS IN BETA TEST THIS MONTH
Antares Alliance Group, the Amdahl-EDS venture plans to introduce its Edge Web development products this month. With its built-in ActiveX object library and VBA scripting engine, Antares says Edge will simplify the development of Web-based applications.
Edge will connect with OLE/DB and ODBC-compliant databases and features a dynamic, scaleable object-oriented execution engine. Edge personal edition will be released betas this month and ships in January, for about $300. Silver and Gold versions, for up to five and 100 developers, respectively will be available in March for $1,000 and $2,000 and an enterprise version is expected in June 1997. Business Development Manager Richard Morris says so far the Edge product development group has kept itself separate from Antares' ObjectStar mainframe software group, but that the two products should be compatible somewhere down the line. www.aag.com
Majesco Software's Internet products division, JAALSoft, plans to ship JAAL 1.0, a Java-based Web development tool with its own 4GL next month. The JAAL Application Server uses WhizCode 4GL, a meta language, to interface with and bind HTML and SQL together with one third of the lines of code required for similar applications built in SQL, C, Shell Scripts, or Perl, according to the Santa Clara, California company. The development environment is all written in Java. JAAL 1.0 with the Application Server and development environment costs from $3,000 to $9,000. www.jaal.com
Microsoft NetPC: Internet nowhere to be seen
Microsoft chose its SiteBuilder conference in San Jose last week to unveil the latest plank in its deny-embrace-extend strategy with the launch of its own version of the Network Computer reference profile: the NetPC reference platform, having scoffed at the notion of the original one when it was announced back in May.
The NetPC announcement came the day before Sun unveiled its NCs and a week before the expected Oracle NC launch. The NetPC reference platform calls for an Intel Corp Pentium processor running at 100MHz and up, with at least 16Mb RAM, Windows device drivers and support for its so-called plug and play specification, audio, and video capabilities, and so on. What it amounts to is a description of an average Windows-running PC in use today.
It calls for one of either an Ethernet, token ring, a 28.8Kbps modem, T1 line, ISDN or Asynchronous Transfer Mode connection. The main difference is the inclusion of a machine-readable unique ID for each client, and the ability to wake up the clients from the server. It also calls, somewhat vaguely for "minimal user interaction for installing and configuring devices."
Initial support came from Intel Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co, which is committed to producing a NetPC some time next year as part of its Vectra family. Others committed to making a machine that differs very little from what they already produce include Compaq, Dell, DEC, Gateway 2000, Packard Bell and Texas Instruments.
The 'Net' part of the profile seems to be referring to LANs or WANs, as there was no mention of Internet standards, including HTTP, HTML, or Java. Indeed, the timing of Microsoft's announcement seemed questionable, given that Microsoft was unable to produce any software vendor support for its NetPC - introduced at a developers show. In fact, VP platforms Paul Maritz avoided making the NetPC announcement during his keynote address to the developers. It came later at a private "media-only" event.
This, along with Microsoft's past and present public antipathy towards the idea of low-cost, low-maintenance networked computers, the ho-hum support of its hardware partners, and even the last-minute feel to Maritz's presentation - there were some badly-drawn diagrams used by Maritz in his presentation that showed a typical NetPC box being 3" high, 11" wide and 8.5" deep, with no internal expansion slots, and somewhat confusingly, a 133MHz Pentium chip - would seem to indicate that Microsoft is at least hedging its bets on this nag.
But if the NetPC may have been smoke and mirrors, Microsoft went out of its way, time and again, to suggest that "lowering the cost of ownership for PCs" had become its latest marketing theme. Maritz even had Compaq talking about "lowering the cost of ownership" at its workstation launch the next day in San Francisco. But it is the Wintel axis that's responsible for the rise in the cost of ownership. Maritz said the difference between the NetPC and an NC was that "the NetPC is incompatible with the NC," which we know by now. Meantime, Oracle Corp's senior VP strategic marketing and business development, Karen White was asked if Oracle's NC specification would be supporting the NetPC in the future. She replied "I think not".
Microsoft's software partners were called in to support its "Zero Administration initiative for Windows", which seems to be Microsoft's way of promising that PCs will some day work on the network without causing administrators massive headaches. Microsoft says NT 5.0 will enable users' data to be "reflected" onto the server and will feature automatic application installation, and OS updates. www.microsoft.com
MICROSOFT UNVEILS DYNAMIC HTML - FORMER TRIDENT
While the Microsoft's NetPCs may have garnered most of the media attention at last week's SiteBuilder conference, Dynamic HTML stole the show for most of the participants. This, despite the fact that all it seemed to do in Paul Maritz's keynote demonstration was to create a floating genie that didn't understand voice commands and kept repeating "I must have cotton in my ears".
Code-named Trident, Dynamic HTML manipulates COM object models within HTML allowing Web pages to morph themselves on the fly - without having to contact the Web server. It can be used to manipulate HTML tags, style sheets, texts, or COM controls dynamically. In short, it makes Web pages look Java-enabled without using Java. Microsoft has submitted Dynamic HTML as a spec to the W3C and expects it to be adopted as part of the standard HTML. Microsoft calls it a "central feature" of its recently announced Active Desktop. Dynamic HTML will first ship in Internet Explorer 4.0. www.microsoft.com
Merchant Server starts Microsoft's Normandy landings
Microsoft, last week, announced availability of its Merchant Server 1.0. Platforms and Applications Group VP Paul Maritz says the product evolved in part from software developed by MSN and from last June's acquisition of Unix software company, eShop.
Merchant Server, which will ship as a member of Microsoft's BackOffice line, uses a template scheme to let users design their own Internet storefronts. It comes bundled with VeriFone's vPOS transaction software that takes SSL encrypted orders and processes the transaction with the bank's gateway via the SET protocol. Orders are processed via "pipeline" software that handles administrative details like tax and payment processing. Merchant Server has hooks for any ODBC-compliant database. CyberCash promises to integrate its micropayment technology into the server.
Microsoft announced partnerships with financial institutions, resellers, service providers and third party application developers, and it provided about 40 reference customers who Microsoft claims are actually conducting transactions on the web- some of whom, like 1-800 flowers and Tower Records, were old eShop customers who have, presumably, switched from Unix eShop to NT BackOffice. Curiously, one of the sites we checked out, Granville Books (www.granvillebooks.com), had managed to list only its Microsoft-related titles.
Merchant Server, says Maritz, is the first of Microsoft's Normandy technologies to ship. Also expected from Normandy - now called "Microsoft Commercial Internet System" are: a conference server, personalization system, information retrieval server, and a content replication system. Microsoft also intends to market membership system software, Internet News Servers and Internet Mail Server to ISPs. www.microsoft.com
MARKET COOL ON INDEXING
The danger of living in interesting times was made clear to Fulcrum Technologies last week as its stock plunged roughly 25 percent in the week.
The Canadian search engine company posted earnings and revenues that were right on analyst consensus, but, according to chief operations officer, Mike Laginski, analysts are concerned that Fulcrum's lead product, Fulcrum Find!, would be adversely affected by lower-than-expected deployment of Microsoft Exchange. Microsoft reported 750,000 seats installed last month, less than expected.
Laginski says the drop was "partially gut instinct on the analysts' part," but sources say that the drop came as an unanticipated reaction to a Fulcrum attempt to lower analyst expectations for the next quarter. Analysts are also concerned that Fulcrum's market may disappear as companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM begin to integrate similar indexing products into their product infrastructure.
Fulcrum's main competitor, Verity Inc's, stock also took a plunge last month following its earnings report (OR 16).www.fulcrum.com.
Also battered by the market last week, was EDI company Preminos Software, whose stock was down 54% following third-quarter losses of $2.2 million or 20 cents a share. Analysts had been expecting profits of 5 cents per share. www.preminos.com
Earthlink Network Inc is trying again for an IPO and said it will file with the SEC for an offering coming in the next few weeks. It pulled an earlier attempt in July.
Asymetrix fires broadside at JIT compilers
Asymetrix Corp is claiming that so many people have tried to download beta copies of its SuperCede for Java development tool that it's banned its employees from net surfing while it boosts its T1 line capacity.
The Java virtual machine inside SuperCede is supposed to run Java 10 times faster than just-in-time (JIT) compilers and 50 times faster than interpreted code. It also reckons people ran to its booth at Software Development East in Washington DC last week when the betas became available.
The launch was held on a Trident-class nuclear submarine off the coast of Washington state last Monday. The gag? It "torpedoes the competition." Hyperbole aside, Asymetrix, which was started by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and is run mostly by ex-Sun marketing types, has been causing a bit of a stir with its Java virtual machine.
The Bellevue, Washington-based company says it's JVM implementation deviates not one jot from Sun's spec, but is much, much faster. Asymetrix had Sun apparently very interested in the compiling technology at the heart of SuperCede for Java, but it now looks as if Sun will have its own JIT compiler next year. Sun incidentally also spoke to Symantec Corp for its JIT compiler, which Netscape recently took in favor of Borland's offering.
But Asymetrix reckons it stands above the lot because it's a true rapid application development tool, it says. Symantec's Cafe and Microsoft's J++ are based on the C++ programming model of compile test, link and run, whereas SuperCede for Java compiles everything at machine level, so it's not a JIT compiler, and tests on the fly. So far NEC and Toshiba have licensed it, and more had been promised by now, but none have been finalized yet (OR 6). www.asymetrix.com
NETSCAPE SIGNS WITH ELEMEDIA FOR WEB VOICE AND AUDIO
Netscape Communications Corp has signed up with Lucent Technologies Inc's recently formed elemedia division and will incorporate elemedia multimedia communications technology in with future products, including Netscape Communicator and Netscape Media Server.
Elemedia - it stands for "elements of multimedia" was launched last month to sell software for allowing high quality, low-complexity voice, music and video content to be run across the Internet and intranets.
Its Media Plus range includes voice software for telephone-quality conversations over the Internet, full-duplex speakerphone software for personal computers and Internet phone devices, and CD-quality audio software for applications such as music-on- demand and real-time audio broadcasting. Videoconferencing software is due by the end of the year, according to elemedia, which is based at the Bell Labs site in Murray Hill, New Jersey.
Other elemedia customers include DigiPhone manufacturer Camelot Corporation, communications software house Isochrone Inc, and Internet broadcasting service company Soundprint Media Center.
LUCENT PITCHES IN WITH 56KBPS MODEM CONTENDER
The datacommunications industry is gearing up for the battle to define the standard for 56Kbps analog modem transmissions, and yet another heavyweight - Lucent Technologies' Microelectronics Group - has come forward with its own solution.
And like Rockwell Semiconductor Systems Inc and US Robotics Corp, Lucent is aiming the technology specifically at users dialing into the Internet, and also requires conforming equipment to be installed at both the user and ISP sites.
Lucent has implemented its technology, dubbed V.flex2, on two chips initially: the SDP1643, to be launched as part of Lucent's Apollo range and intended for Windows-based systems, and the DSP1674, intended for installation at the service provider end. Lucent claims to have implemented much of the functionality in software, so that if the industry adopts one of the incompatible standards, its products will be upgradeable. And Lucent plans to offer the software across its other chips. Shipments are planned for the first quarter of next year, with first demonstrations at Comdex in late November.
GENERAL MAGIC ENTERS THE TWILIGHT ZONE
General Magic Inc continues to bleed and gave out another 80 pink slips last week to leave just 200 at the Sunnyvale, California one-time star. It also reported ugly third quarter figures and warned of a fourth quarter charge between $2m and $4m to cover the job losses.
General Magic is fortunate to have raised $95m from its flotation back in February 1995, otherwise it could have all been over already for the Sunnyvale, California one-time star.
It turned in third quarter net losses of $12.4m, after a $1.5m hit, up from $5.1m losses a year ago. But worse still, revenues plunged 77% to just $754,000 in the quarter. Founder and CEO Marc Porat finally fell on his sword in September. Cash and equivalents were some $79.6m on September 30, down $25.1m in nine months, but the interest on what's left is the only source of income the company has right now. At the time of flotation that company had already spent $53.1m developing and promoting its Magic Cap PDA operating system technology and, against revenues of only $2.5 million.
The company also developed a language called Telescript language, that AT&T was using in its Personal Link messaging service. But Java came along, AT&T scrapped PersonalLink and it all started to go horribly wrong for Porat and friends.
Nine month losses were $31.1m, after the same charge, up from $15.2m losses a year ago, on revenues that fell 49.7% to $4.7m. The revenue plunge is due to a lack of licensing revenues as the company looks to so-called intelligent Web agents to get it out of its hole. Magic Cap for Windows 95 was released just after the quarter ended and combines Magic Cap and Telescript.
Porat's replacement, Steve Markman reckons he can see ways to conserve what money is left while growing once more. Porat always said that the company wouldn't make money until 1997, but that too looks unlikely now, and he's not around to do anything about it anymore. www.genmagic.com
CyberCash saw third quarter net losses up at $7.7m from $2.4m before on revenues of $39,100 from nothing last time. Nine month net losses rose to $18.5m from $6.3m before on revenues of $76.8m from nothing before.
Novell Inc plans to maintain its R&D spending at about 17% of revenues as it seeks to make up lost ground in the Internet and intranets businesses, Vic Langford, senior VP Internet and intranet services told Reuter last week. He pointed out that that level of spending had had to include Wordperfect work in 1996. Novell currently spends over $20m on advertising and promotion a quarter.
CompuServe has put on hold all advertising and marketing programs, Infoworld reports, citing an internal memo that also said that at the current rate of spending for marketing programs, CompuServe would have run out of money by January.
Wired Ventures Inc, having pulled its IPO, is now likely to undergo a big restructuring. Analysts expect the company to reshuffle its HotWired Web site unit, perhaps sharply reducing staff, which they said has swelled to be among the biggest for an Internet publisher. One said the company might have been more successfully priced had it spun off as purely a magazine.
FINANCE BRIEFS
LOTUS STILL TO MAKE UP ITS JAVA MIND
IBM Corp's Lotus seemed to be a bit confused as to what it was doing at Sun's JavaStation extravaganza last week.
It was timidly showing a lite version of cc:Mail running through Sun's HotJava on a JavaStation, re-written in Java, claiming it took up just 100Kb of memory. Lotus said it may or may not come out as a product, it all depends on adding IMAP support, which it may or may not do, and the need to link to an LDAP server, which it may or may not do.
Word at the show was that Java looks like being the order of the day for Lotus around the third quarter of next year. But Notes, sorry Domino 4.5, was announced last week in a more complete form than before and the company is promising that Mike Zisman, now the company's executive VP strategy will have a fuller Java/Web story to tell on Thursday at the Lotus Developers' Conference in Anaheim. www.lotus.com
AMERICA ONLINE TO TAKE VAST HIT IN RESTRUCTURING
America Online Inc gave its business its biggest-ever shake-up last week in the hope that it will make more sense when the pieces have fallen.
The headline move was to give users the option of a flat $19.95 a month pricing option, but more importantly, it is moving to much more conservative accounting in a switch that will cost it $385m against its third quarter figures.
It is dividing into three operating units: AOL Networks, to oversee the core on-line service; AOL Studios, for creating on-line programming, and ANS, its network infrastructure arm. As well as taking customer acquisition costs when they are incurred, rather than spreading them over several months, during which many of those customers may have fled, the company has also directly addressed its high churn rate, and says that by more prudent recruiting, it has added nearly 250,000 net new subscribers in October alone.
The new pricing structure calls for two unlimited pricing tiers to provide a "comfort factor" for heavy and medium users, and a $4.95 a month for three hours plan for light users. Extra hours on this cost $2.50 each. The $19.95 option offers unlimited network usage, including Internet access.
It also hopes to keep more customers by offering advance payment rates of $14.95 per month for customers that pay for two years, and $17.95 per month for those that pay in advance for one year. And a new $9.95 per month rate offers unlimited access to the proprietary content only for people that already have a separate Internet access connection. As well as the $385m charge, it will take a one-time charge of $75m in its December quarter to cover the costs of reorganizing the company.
The company admits the restructuring steps and service pricing changes will hurt earnings during the next several quarters, but insists they will increase its competitiveness and prepare it for the "next stage of growth."It aims to be back into profits in its fourth quarter to June. www.aol.com
DISCUSSIONS KEEPS INTERNET OPEN STANDARDS ALIVE
Recent rumblings in the media about Internet Society delays and lack of direction in pursuing a coherent top level domain strategy for the Internet (OR 16) resulted in a flurry of postings this week on the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF's) discussion group on the whether or not the unenforced consensus that has given the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) can or cannot be maintained.
As the week went on, the discussion progressed from a discussion of a specific story predicting the "Internet Cartel's" fall to one on the nature of a cartel, to a discussion on language issues within the IETF, to a discussion of what lingua franca is, to a discussion on human behavior and whether people act because they are compelled to do so. Meanwhile, ISOC has announced that the implementation of top level domains will be delayed by about six months as it forms an ad-hoc committee to study the issue (OR 22). http://www.ietf.org/mailinglists.html
APPLE STILL BETS ON NEWTON
Apple will show MessagePad 2000 - its fourth version of the Newton - at Comdex with general availability in the first quarter 1997.
It includes a built in spreadsheet, word processor, a personal information manager with calendar, phone list, and reminders, connection software and hardware for both Windows and Macintosh desktops and recording capabilities. Calendars are compatible with Lotus Organizer, Microsoft's Schedule+, and Claris Organizer.
Apple used Digital Equipment Corp and Advanced RISC Machines' 160MHz StrongArm processor in the thing. It can be connected with a Windows or Mac OS desktop and comes pre-configured with a browser and e-mail software. Modem and Internet service are not included.
The Newton, which has had several problems in the past may be faced with even greater challenges. Microsoft, who recently hired Steven Capps, Newton's chief developer, and Walter Smith, who wrote NewtonScript, is introducing a "lite" version of Windows for hand-held computers. Apple MessagePad 2000 is expected to cost less than $1,000 but other vendors, including Compaq Computer are likely to introduce their own low-cost Newton-like systems at Comdex.
AMULET GEARS UP TO DELIVER WEB-BASED RESEARCH
Amulet Corp is the latest company to get on the agent-based Internet software to define what you want from the morass of stuff that's out there. Its InfoWizard software is currently in beta, and will be available early next year.
It uses Lycos' search engine and features content from the likes of CMP, PR Newswire, government reports and users forums, feeding the results down to a Web browser. It's not a news feed like some of the other offerings, but a way of collating reports from the Web, aimed at specific vertical markets; high-tech will be the first one live.
The company hasn't decided what verticals to offer next, but will license the sources when it decides. Two year-old Amulet, based in Acton, Massachusetts was founded by CEO Den Ceruttii, late of Wang and IBM, and Larry Floryan, founder of Banyan Systems Inc. Backers include Venrock Associates and Patricof Ventures. www.infowizard.com
ONECAST LAUNCH INTEGRATES POINTCAST AND LOTUS DOMINO
PointCast Inc appears to have been making a good living out of Web publishing via its Internet screen-saver newscast software, but like everyone else it's been eyeing internal intranets as the real source of future profit.
Last week it launched new products under the banner OneCast, along with a business partnership with IBM's Lotus Development Corp. The idea of OneCast is to combine the general news PointCast already provides with internal company news and vertical market industry news. Internal company news is handled by PointCast's I-Server, server-based news distribution software that the Santa Clara-based company began shipping to corporates earlier this month.
Now the I-Server product is to be combined with Lotus' Domino Server under the name Lotus Domino.Broadcast, including jointly developed Domino.Headline software. With Domino.Broadcast, corporates will be able to broadcast information to employees' desktops via Lotus Notes over their internal networks. In order to provide companies with near real-time news feeds, PointCast partnered with Salt Lake City, Utah-based WavePhore Inc, a subscription-based premium content provider. It has also partnered with Vienna, Virginia-based IT services company BTG Inc to help it set up what it calls a CommunityCast network, so that professionals in such vertical market industries as health, government and real-estate can view detailed industry news alongside their public and company news. OneCast products, including Domino.Broadcast, are set to become available in the first quarter of next year, said the company.
DOT Gossip
Visigenic Software Inc will release a Corba-to-DCOM bridge it's calling Visibroker for ActiveX Bridge later this quarter that it's been testing for a few weeks. Work is underway on making it bi-directional, and that will be ready by February, in time to submit to the OMG for its COM/Corba inter-networking part B spec, for which submissions are due next Valentine's Day. www.visigenic.com
Borland's Java development tool, code named Latte, has been christened Open JBuilder. Borland claims the product will ship early 1997. www.borland.com
IBM and Intel announced an agreement to reduce the support costs of high-performance networked PCs with the formation of an Advanced Manageability Alliance. The two say they will work together to define, develop, integrate and deliver standard systems to enable customers to simplify the installation, configuration and management of networked PCs, with Intel starting out by incorporating IBM's Wake On LAN remote management capability into its Fast Ethernet adaptors and LANDesk Client Manager - and the IBM Personal Computer Co will incorporate the Intel products into its Pentium Pro and Pentium desktop computers from early 1997.
MCI/News Corp Internet Ventures CFO Jerry Lyons has flown the coop to join e-commerce software company, InterWorld Technology Ventures.
Microsoft says it will explain what it's doing with its handheld PC OS, Windows CE at Comdex.
Data General's hush hush Thiinline NC division will apparently show its first network computer device at a December Internet show in the US. It supposedly incorporates some third party technology but is a Data General product, not re-badged.
SunSoft Inc has been responding to mumbling from some quarters that applications created using the Active Software Inc Java GUI builder included in Java WorkShop incur a performance hit because it creates a set of shadow classes that must be run atop the WAT advanced windowing toolkit, the SunSoft group marketing manager Jon Williams says all that will be fixed with the release of JDK 1.1.
NetObjects Inc has been winning some hearts and minds with its Fusion Web site building software, and has landed another heavy hitter with the news that AT&T will offer it to its Web hosting services customers. It will be available from next quarter through AT&T Easy World Wide Web Services and the AT&T Enhanced Web Development Package. NetObjects Fusion 1.0 runs on Windows 95 and NT and the Mac version will be out before the year-end. www.netobjects.com
Sun's got Netra js running a bunch of third party NCs in the labs.
The three major US television networks will use Silicon Graphics Inc's graphics systems in their coverage of election results on Tuesday. SGI says data obtained by the networks from polling places across the country will be translated into graphics for broadcast almost immediately, and viewers with access to a browser will be able to obtain the same information on the Web. www.sgi.com
Sun has created a Java Card API which will enable smart card developers to write Java applications for their devices. Schlumberger Ltd's electronic transactions unit has already committed to developing a Cyberflex line of Java-based smart cards for early next year.
Information Advantage Inc has revved its DecisionSuite Web-enabled data warehouse package to version 3.6 with the addition of report prompting and the integration of Windows-based PC tools. Report promoting means the reports can be changed dynamically on-line, and the company's WebOLAP browser front-end has now been integrated with Windows so the same report can be shared across both environments. www.infoadvan.com
SunSoft's still advising developers to program large, mission critical applications in C++ rather than Java.
suck.com reckons Time-Warner's sitting on the Web's future only Gerald Levin doesn't know it. If PointCast's the model to beat then Time-Warner's NY1 channel format - the 24-hour news, sports and weather channel for New York City - could clean up. What's NY1 but a screensaver for your television? If you're not in New York go see http://pathfinder.com/@@dLi*hwUAYjwedJrJ/NY1/
Web21 lists the top 100 Web sites in order of the number of page requests received. No prizes for guessing that www.microsoft.com is number one. www.100hot.com
3Com Corp, which paid $4.1m to get Candlestick Park, the home of the San Francisco 49ers NFL team renamed 3Com Park for four and a half years thought a way to spread the company name even more would be to offer free Internet kiosks at the ground for fans to use, it told Investors Business Daily. It put Dell Latitude Pentium machines with 64Mb RAM in stainless steel and lexan cases to withstand even the most pumped-up fan. When it came to the operating system it was a no-brainer for 3Com: it had to be Unix. It opted for Solaris over NeXT Step and SCO Unix and Windows was never really considered. 3Com said it didn't want to have to keep a person on site just to re-boot the machines all the time.
Excite Inc's bought exclusive rights to the Jimi Hendrix song, "Are You Experienced," and will use it in an aggressive national print, radio, television, outdoor and online advertising campaign. No jokes about dialing in using your Purple Hayes modem, please.
Microsoft Corp's got the beta of Internet Information Server 3.0 up at www.microsoft.com/iis/
Visigenic - which is trying to turn Java developers on to its VisiBroker for Java ORB rather than use Sun's Joe - says Sun's HotJava browser and HotJava Views environment is a solid and reliable front-end and privately thinks Java developers should target that rather than the Communicator and cut-down Navigator browser environments being created by its investor Netscape.
Sounds like SunSoft Inc's Internet Server Supplement known for Solaris 2.5.1 internally as "Jack" - which includes enhancements for speeding performance of hosted Web servers, WebNFS and DHCP server - is laying the foundation for the company's own Vishnu Web server. A whole bunch of other technology is due in the 1997 Solaris 2.6 cut.
Near miss: Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen apparently tried to buy Oak Technologies a couple of years back, the part of Sun Microsystems that developed Java.
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WEEKLY DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERNET FRONT
November 4-8 1996 Issue No 23
SANGA PROMISES JAVA "BROWSERWARE" TO OEMS
Sanga Corp is promising a kind of Java groupware package in January which it will most likely sell through OEM partners.
The eight-month old company is talking to unnamed software vendors about licensing the software, which is derived from its current offering, Sanga Pages, which the Burlington, Massachusetts company claims is the first application to be written entirely in Java and use the JDBC standard. It dubs it "browserware."
Sanga Pages is a suite of components to write applications to link to and use legacy data. It has the usual components: a client, form design, view design, scripting, e-mail and so on.
Sanga CEO Shane Maine reckons the software industry hasn't yet woken up to the effect the network computer will have on it, unlike some of the hardware industry. As Sun Microsystems Inc CEO Scott McNealy talks about the NC being like having to know how to program your switch before being able to use the phone, well, Maine reckons software still hasn't evolved to suit those erstwhile phone users.
With the browserware launch in January, Sanga will divvy up its software into three: a shrink-wrapped package that may or may not have its own name on it and will be sold to ISVs and large corporations to do with what they will; a set of components, and a component assembly tool. Right now, Sanga is the set of components and the assembly tool, but the components themselves are set to change before the release.
Sanga's going to add more scripting built into the components, so for instance a button to initiate a foreign exchange trade might have a lot of the intelligence for that trade contained within.
Sanga Corp is another potential computer success story with its origin in fast food. From a meeting at a McDonalds last March where CEO Shane Maine and his brother Shaun were chatting with a friend, Mark Lussier, who used to be a software engineer at Lotus, pondering as to what would be the next big thing in the computer industry, as you do. Lussier suggested something like Notes in Java, and Maine promised that if it could be done, he'd fund the development and distribute it.
And a few junk food dinners later, Sanga Pages is the first step down that road. www.sangacorp.com
IBM, SUN TURN TO PLANETWORKS FOR JAVA MIDDLEWARE TOOLS
New York City OLTP integrator Tangent International Inc has created a Java-enabled version of its Distributed Computing Integrator (DCI) front-end development tool called Interspace, which IBM Corp and Sun Microsystems Inc will sell packaged with other middleware tools following their cross-licensing deal on MQSeries, CICS and Java.
In fact IBM and Sun are part-funding the development of Interspace through a new Tangent unit called Planetworks that will carry the company's Java product lines. They're effectively turning Java front-end application development for their shared middleware components over to Tangent.
DCI is a PowerBuilder extension for creating CICS, MQSeries, Tuxedo and Top End applications that has been built in conjunction with Powersoft, IBM, Novell, and AT&T. It has been extended to support Netscape, Visual Basic, SQLWindows front-ends and now Java via Interspace. Developers can use their Java programming tools of choice with Interspace, including Symantec or Borland; Interspace plugs the middleware services into the application.
FORTHCOMING FALCON
IBM, Sun and Planetworks will ship an Interspace bundle by year-end that will include Sun's Java development software; Interspace; CICS and MQSeries clients for multiple platforms; CICS and MQSeries server software for Solaris; and the CICS Gateway for Java. A two-user licence starts at $5,000 on Solaris, AIX and NT.
IBM MQSeries architect Robert Drew says that without Interspace developers have to write a server component in C, develop Java applications and create CICS and MQSeries class libraries or write others that can access CICS and MQSeries from C on the Web server. Planetworks thinks that between them the three companies can ship 30,000 copies of Interspace in six to nine months. Planetworks will create a version of Interspace for use with Microsoft's forthcoming Falcon message queuing system. Level 8 Systems Inc is now beta testing its Falcon-to-MQSeries gateway.
JAVASCRIPT IMPLEMENTATIONS TO BE BROUGHT INTO LINE
Fears that multiple implementations of Netscape Communications Corp's JavaScript blend of the LiveScript scripting language and Java are getting out of step and leading to incompatible Web environments have prompted the creation of a JavaScript reference specification and JavaScript 1.1 implementation, now available to Netscape One developer licensees.
Microsoft Corp and Borland International, which created their own versions of JavaScript - Redmond integrating it with COM - are expected to bring their implementations into line soon.
Netscape submitted its spec to the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) for standardization a couple of weeks back after W3C and IETF turned the thing down claiming not to be in the language business and also to be overworked.
JavaSoft and SunSoft claim lack of a spec has held up their promised support for JavaScript in their products. This has meant that Java environments such as the HotJava browser which runs on Sun's shiny new JavaStation (see page 2) cannot support Web pages created with JavaScript.
While Java is used by programmers to create new objects and applets, JavaScript was designed for use by HTML developers to script - or add interactive features - to the behavior of objects running on either the client or the server. Problem is that the rise of the intranet has pushed JavaScript into use as a full-blown client-server development product, not just a scripting language, Netscape says.
The relationship between Java and JavaScript is described by Netscape as
analogous to that between OCX OLE controls and Visual Basic. Netscape says it's now documenting the 300,000-odd Web pages it reckons use JavaScript to figure out what kinds of differences their implementations contain them are so it can support them in future versions of JavaScript. Netscape reckons the reference implementation accommodates 98% of existing JavaScript code and it's now porting the environment to its server products. The forthcoming Communicator suite will use a JavaScript 1.2 implementation.
SUN GETS THE NETWORK COMPUTER BATTLE STARTED: SHIFT HAPPENS?
The era, if that is what it can be called, of network computers finally got underway last week when Sun Microsystems Inc rolled out its big guns in New York full of hyperbole and gags and even a few computers. Sun CEO Scott McNealy brandished a Star 7 handheld computer, that the First Person division of Sun built back in 1992, declaring it the "world's first network computer." First Person was established to win a chunk of the TV set-top box market that hasn't taken off, and subsequently melted back into Sun, when the operating system called Oak it was building for the set-top devices found it's purpose. The niche turned out to be network computers and the language was renamed Java.
McNealy reckons Java computing, as Sun likes to call the whole affair, represents the third phase for the company; the first two being workstations and enterprise servers. It is ironic that Sun, the company which shunned the diskless PC and X terminal businesses in the early 1990s, insisting they were not the future of computing, is now the one shouting from the rooftops that diskless thin client are the way forward. The difference this time around is Java.
Sun duly announced the JavaStation Network Computer at its self-styled 'Independence Day' event in New York last week, together with Netra j servers and software necessary to run it.
And for a few months it will only be Sun servers that can support the JavaStation, at least until a common boot protocol for NC devices is agreed upon by the companies behind the original NC Reference Profile: Sun, IBM, Oracle, Netscape, Apple and their followers. Nobody of course would venture when that might be, but Gene Banman, VP and general manager of Sun's desktop systems group responsible for the device needs it to write a spec that third parties will use to configure their server software to boot JavaStations.
Sun is of course out to destroy the WinTel desktop monopoly with reduced cost of ownership NC devices and will need all the help it can get from other vendors.
The client
The JavaStation uses a 100MHz 32-bit microSparc II RISC and starts at $742 with 8Mb RAM, keyboard and a mouse. There are two models; the desktop "coffee maker," a curious looking affair; "looks like an earthquake doesn't it?" said Sun CEO Scott McNealy. There's also a more conventional brick-shaped design which can be hidden away in kiosks and such.
A coffee maker with a 14" monitor goes for $1,000 and $1,565 buys JavaStation with a more realistic 16Mb RAM and a 17" monitor. Being an NC it has no slots, no hard or floppy and no CD-ROM, but supports up to 64Mb of memory and 10-baseT Ethernet. Flash RAM will be added sometime next year for dial-up and remote users along with 100Mb/sec - 10/100-BaseT Ethernet - PPP plus other networking options including ISDN around the middle of next year.
All the software, including the JavaOS, HotJava browser and customizable HotJava Views user environment - which with email, HTML browser, calendaring and name directory looks like a low-grade version to Netscape Communications Corp's next-generation Communicator client announced a couple of weeks back - is stored on the server.
The server
Currently there are two ways to deploy JavaStations. Either buy one of the of the existing boxes Sun has pre-configured with a new
Netra j internet and Java software, or upgrade existing Solaris servers with a new Solaris 2.5.1 internet server supplement which includes a Java virtual machine, WebNFS and a bootp server. Sun's created Netra j versions of the microSparc SparcStation 4, both uniprocessor and SMP UltraSparc desktops, the model 5000 deskside and 4000 rackmount SMP Ultra Enterprise servers.
Netra j software is a superset of the Netra i internet server software - including Netscape Enterprise Server - plus SunSoft's JavaWorkshop development and management tools (a just-in-time compiler is coming), an IMAP4 email client and IBM 3270 terminal emulation and mainframe connectivity software from Open Connect Systems.
Netra j servers start at $7,700 for a SparcStation 4-based package supporting up to 50 devices, rising to around $200,000 for an Ultra Enterprise 5000 offering, capable of supporting thousands of NCs according to Sun. Shipments to large customers begin in December with volumes due early next year.
The applications
On the applications front Netscape's Navio Communications Corp unit is re-writing Navigator in Java for JavaStation, and Corel's Office for Java and Applix Inc's Anyware will ship in demo form, while Oracle's Java-based business applications suite will ship when it's ready next year. The name and other details of the suite will be announced by Oracle during this week.
Sun claims more than 450 ISVs are writing applications in Java, and won support from systems integrators including Andersen Consulting, Cambridge Technology Partners and EDS, and existing customers including First Union National Bank, Kodak, BT and CSX.
Sun showed the JavaStation booting from a Netra j and updating the same application across a Sparcstation, Power Mac, Network Computing Devices Inc NC and a PC running Windows NT. While at present no third party server can boot a JavaStation, the Netras can supposedly start any NC.
Sun's customary tilt at Microsoft included a version of Apple's famous 1984-
inspired commercial for the Mac introduction in which Big Brother was replaced with a Bill Gates look-alike shouting "More is more! Excess is beautiful! Send me a check!" "How about we run it on MSNBC?" quipped McNealy.
SUNSOFT BUYS-IN APPLET BUILDING TOOLS, READIES JIT
SunSoft's contribution to the JavaStation festivities included additional Java application development, compilation and deployment tools in a new version of its JavaWorkshop programming suite, plus Java management tools and Java-to-Corba connectivity.
New in a revised Java WorkShop will be the anticipated drag and drop Project Studio development software which can be used to create Java apps from pre-built Java Beans-based components. The technology, which is not Sun's own but licensed from a company it declined to name, includes a visual assembly tool with charts, graphs, forms-based database access and spreadsheets, plus an HTML authoring and publishing tool. It's got shared white board and chat components too.
Ice Tea, the Java-to-C/C++ middleware for connecting Java clients, applets and objects to back-end legacy applications over TCP/IP networks will also be included. The idea is that users will click on HTML links on a Web page, Ice Tea will go off and get Java classes that will open TCP/IP connections back to the server application. Project Studio and Ice-T are due by mid-1997. The new software will go up on Macintosh as well as Microsoft and Solaris environments.
Project Speedway is a set of tools and compilers for tuning Java application performance on Solaris, Win32 and Macintosh. SunSoft's own JIT compilers and a new version of the JDK javac compiler claimed to compile one million lines of code per second are due by year-end. Native server-side Java compilers that will turn machine-independent Java byte code into persistent machine code, presumably for Sparc microJava processors, are due second half of 1997.
There'll be additional Java virtual machines with improved garbage collection, synchronization, locking and exception handling. Joe 1.0, Sun's Java object request broker which ties Java clients to back-end object environments is now also available. Solstice Enterprise Manager is being re-written in Java and will support JMAPI by summer 1997. Version 2.0 of the IMAP4-based Solstice Internet Mail Server supporting email clients such as HotJava Views on the JavaStations and other NC devices is $500; due in 60 days.
Lotus plays its Domino hand with Notes in the background
IBM Corp's Lotus Development Corp is finally getting its act together regarding its Web-enabled Notes, and now it has decided to combine its Notes and Domino server offerings as a single product under the name Lotus Domino 4.5, to be released next year.
Powered by Notes, the new product is aimed at emphasising Lotus' Internet capabilities and simplifying its marketing. Some options that were previously available separately will now come with Domino, and the price will increase as a consequence.
Lotus is also making clustering and partitioning software generally available, having sold it to telecommunications customers for two years. And Lotus will also introduce a client product called Weblicator that works with browsers, adding agent functions so users can fetch selected pages, categorize and index them and work with them off-line. It's essentially a lot of the Notes and Organizer technology unbundled and put into a standards-based client.
The Domino 4.5 server will cost $1,000 for a single processor version, up from $500, and $3,000 for the SMP version, up from $2,300 previously. It's available from January 1. The Advanced Services option, which adds clustering, server partitioning and usage tracking and billing costs a further $1,000 per server, and will be available with Domino 4.5. With Domino Server 4.5, Lotus will also make available licenses for its Domino Mail Access, so that mailboxes can be hosted on Domino servers and accessible via any standard e-mail package supporting MAPI or POP3, as well as Notes. It will charge $35 per mailbox. The prices will increase, but so will the functions.
Domino.Action, previously know as Net.Action will now come as standard. It's a set of Web design templates, the ability to integrate graphics, video and sound, workflow for the creation of site content, client access for the creation of Web sites and the integration of the Notes search engine into Web sites. The SMTP message transfer agent will now come as standard also, as will POP3 support and calendaring and scheduling software, largely derived from Lotus Organizer.
Lotus Weblicator brings a lot of the functions previously available in standard Notes clients to standard browsers. This includes persistent storage in a database, creating local copies of Web pages, maintaining the links and full functionality, rather than merely caching them. Web agents are also included with built-in monitors to retrieve and update pre-defined pages and for off-line HTML forms authoring. Weblicator also supports bi-directional IP-based replication between a Domino server and any browser. It will be available on Windows 95 and NT in the first quarter 1997, with a beta up on www.lotus.com before the year-end, for $30.
DEC SUES ALTAVISTA
Seven months after it purchased the rights to the name AltaVista from Campell, California's AltaVista Technology Inc (ATI), DEC is turning around and suing them, for an undetermined amount, over what it alleges are trademark infringements.
For some reason - and neither DEC nor ATI will say why - the original deal left ATI with the rights to the name "Altavista Technologies, Inc" and, more significantly, to the Web domain "altavista.com". In retrospect, not securing the domain name for an Internet search engine seems like a pretty egregious oversight.
According to DEC's complaint, ATI has, essentially, been representing its site as DEC's AltaVista site and has advertised software and ad space on the site under the "AltaVista", rather than "AltaVista Technology Inc" name. The complaint adds that ATI ran a banner on its site that said, "click here for advertising information - over 9m impressions every month!". An ATI spokesperson was evasive as to how many hits altavista.com has been getting, admitting only that it was "less than a million per day". DEC says it's been trying, without success, since May to get ATI to end these practices. ATI says the lawsuit is entirely without merit.
NETSCAPE MAKES UP WITH ORACLE THROUGH NEW ALLIANCE
Oracle Corp and Netscape Communications Corp put their recent tiffs behind them by announcing a strategic alliance, whereby Netscape will do a version of its SuiteSpot and LiveWire Pro servers bundled with Oracle, which will be the only database it bundles with its Merchant, Publishing and Community Systems application-specific servers.
Also, Navigator 3.0 will be the exclusive third-party browser with the operating environment on the Intel-based version of Oracle's Network Computers, due some time in the first half of next year.
The server agreement appears to mean that Netscape has gone back on its 1995 deal with Informix Software Corp to make it its preferred database partner. At the time Netscape co-founder and senior vice president of technology Marc Andreessen said that "it is clear to us that Informix is the technical leader."
Caught a bit off guard, it took Informix a while to get its wits about it, but it responded later the same day claiming the agreement was little but posturing, packaging and repositioning. Netscape sells Informix versions of SuiteSpot and LivewirePro in both development and deployment configurations; the Oracle implementations will be development products only and the customer will have to go back to Oracle for additional deployment licenses, Informix claims.
Informix says it has 10 engineers on site at Netscape compared to Oracle's one and that further Netscape Appfoundry applets, which sit on top of Informix, will be announced in the next 30 to 60 days. Confusingly Netscape later told us it was still working to integrate Informix with Community, Merchant and Publishing System and that it will supply Informix to customers for use with Netscape Applications if required, which seems to fly in the face of the announcement.
Informix hit back saying Oracle's decision to bundle Netscape Navigator 3.0 as the browser on its forthcoming NC is clearly an indication that "Oracle has failed with its PowerBrowser" Web browser. Oracle was talking up its new strategic alliance with Netscape Communications Corp whereby Netscape Navigator 3.0 will be the exclusive third-party browser with the operating environment on the Intel-based version of Oracle's NC's, due some time in the first half of next year. The impact on Netscape's business is entirely dependent on the NC hardware manufacturers, the names of which Oracle will announce on November 4.
WINSOCK V2 COMING SOON
Following Stardust Technologies-hosted meetings last week in San Jose to finalize the Winsock 2 specification, Microsoft says it will be putting a "release candidate" of the software on its Web site by the middle of this month, with a shipping version available in the first quarter 1997. It will be included in the Win32 software development kit in the form of one large self-extracting file.
In fact, the spec was ratified last August and is already shipping in NT 4.0, but a fair amount of interoperability testing and general tweaking is required to make it compatible with WinSock 1.1. Compatibility will come in the form of a WinSock 1.1 DLL, which will plug into the WinSock 2 DLL.
The new spec allows developers to write their own customized, value-added (and, Stardust assures, fully interoperable) modules at the transport service layer or the name space service provider layer. Novell, for example, has implemented an NDS name service provider module.
Stardust's CTO Martin Hall says he realizes interoperability problems with WinSock 2 would have far greater repercussions today than they did with the WinSock 1.1. He says, however, that the migration to WinSock 2 will not be a nightmare because, unlike WinSock 1.1, the spec has been open from the start and rigorously tested since day one. Microsoft promises that Memphis will take care of all DLL upgrades automatically. WinSock 2 will enable an alphabet soup of protocols, including: RSVP, RTP, ATM, SSL - which Microsoft says, will absorb its own PCT protocol - IP multicast, IPX/SPX, DECnet, OSI, DNS, NIS, NDS, and LDAP. www.stardust.com
TANDEM BETS ITS FUTURE ON INTERNET TRANSACTIONS...
Tandem Computers Inc, seeking to transform its business from online transaction processing to Internet transaction processing, has put the seal on its commitment to Redmond and hit the ground with the promised ServerNet versions of its Mips-based Himalaya parallel processors running NonStop, plus the ServerNet-based Intel/NT boxes all of which can be clustered together.
There are six iTP Solution Server software environments; Commerce Server, Media, Messaging, CTI, Intranet and Matrix. iTP Commerce Server enables secure business to consumer transactions on the Internet, with high bandwidth to support interfaces such as virtual reality and real-time video. Media server enables distribution of digital media such as electronic catalogs, music, and large databases, including pay-per-use, or micropayment capability.
Messaging includes secure movement of mail, fax and paging messages. CTI, computer telephony integration, enables companies to run Internet-based call centers, Intranet Server is for internal corporate intranets, and the Matrix Server enables integration of legacy, off the shelf and custom applications, based on message switching technology. The iTP servers support Secure Sockets Layer protocol, and use the Tandem Atalla subsidiary's Websafe2 hardware encryption and management for RSA and DES digital signatures and certificates.
The S-Series is the first deployment of the company's ServerNet connectivity product in its NonStop architecture, which still accounts for 70% of the company's revenues. Tandem says S-Series incorporates the first departure from its basic Non Stop architecture since 1976. The series includes two Mips RISC-based NonStop Himalaya servers and Intel-based Windows NT servers. Both families incorporate ServerNet and can be arranged into the promised System Area Network arrangements, or SANs.
The NT servers - S100 and S1000 - initially include Tandem's own CAS cluster availability software but will migrate to Microsoft's Wolfpack clustering when it is available next year. The company is also introducing the S100FT and S1000FTm a fault tolerant two-node version slated for delivery in early 1997. The Himalaya family, the S7000 and the S70000 said to be fully compatible with the previous K-Series servers. The S7000 uses the R4400 150Mhz processor and S70000 200 Mhz R10000s. The NT S-Series uses 200Mhz Pentium Pros processors, S100 providing one or two-way symmetric multiprocessing, the S1000 one to four way. They are available immediately. The S100 low end NT server starts at less than $9,000 and the entry level Himalaya will cost $69,500.
...BACKS INTERVAL INC FOR ITS INTERNET METERING SKILLS
Its experience with Anamartic Ltd, the wafer-scale memory chip designer that didn't quite deliver on its promise, has not put Tandem Computers Inc off new companies with challengingly new technologies, and Tandem has taken a shine to Austin, Texas-based Interval Inc (not to be confused with Paul Allen's Interval Research in Palo Alto).
The McGuffin or unique selling proposition at Interval is the concept of Internet metering, and the company is working on software that will meter usage and on that basis take care of intelligent digital asset and content rights management and electronic payments, including micropayments. Banker's Trust Inc is equally impressed, and joins Verity Inc and Tandem in contributing to Interval's most recent venture capital round, in which Tandem tossed $1.25m into the pot.
Tandem will work with the Austin, Texas company in an alliance that aims to create a mutually-beneficial business environment on the Internet for consumers and businesses. The two plan to deliver a product architecture enabling metered consumption of information, software and any other form of digital content while ensuring appropriate payment is received for its use. Pay-per-use capabilities will be supported via a micropayments system. The products will address administration of usage rights, protected redistribution, and assured receipt of payment, automating copyright, contract and licensing compliance for customers.
TANDEM, INFORMIX, SLY, ARNIE, BRUCE AND DEMI GO ONLINE
As part of its quest to turn itself from an online transaction processing company to an Internet transaction processor and raise its profile in the burgeoning Internet world, Tandem Computers Inc has set up a new company with Informix Corp and unlikely bedfellow, celebrity-owned restaurant chain Planet Hollywood.
The new company, Planet Hollywood Online Inc, will, look at the distribution of Hollywood-style high value content such as movies and music, over the Internet. Details of the company's offerings are as yet unclear, but it would appear that it will be launching a Hollywood-style Web site. It is also talking about helping film production companies to use the Internet as a distribution vehicle.
Planet Hollywood, owned by movie stars Sylvestor Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, is also said to make two thirds of its revenue from merchandising, and only one third from the food and drink side. It therefore looks likely that it will use the new company to further expand this side of the business.
REDMOND LURES ISPS INTO NEW SUPPORT PROGRAM
Microsoft Corp has set up a support program for Internet service providers, using a classic carrot and stick approach to get them to sign up. The carrot is a listing on the Microsoft Hosting Service referral Web site, the site Redmond set up to automatically guide new users to ISPs in their local area. The stick's the requirement that any ISP in the Internet Service Provider Program who offers web hosting has to use NT Server 4.0 and Internet Information Server as well as support the FrontPage server extensions.
ISPs also have to agree to distribute Internet Explorer - Redmond gives them a royalty-free license to the browser as well as to the Explorer Administration Kit.
ANTARES ALLIANCE EDGE IS IN BETA TEST THIS MONTH
Antares Alliance Group, the Amdahl-EDS venture plans to introduce its Edge Web development products this month. With its built-in ActiveX object library and VBA scripting engine, Antares says Edge will simplify the development of Web-based applications.
Edge will connect with OLE/DB and ODBC-compliant databases and features a dynamic, scaleable object-oriented execution engine. Edge personal edition will be released betas this month and ships in January, for about $300. Silver and Gold versions, for up to five and 100 developers, respectively will be available in March for $1,000 and $2,000 and an enterprise version is expected in June 1997. Business Development Manager Richard Morris says so far the Edge product development group has kept itself separate from Antares' ObjectStar mainframe software group, but that the two products should be compatible somewhere down the line. www.aag.com
Majesco Software's Internet products division, JAALSoft, plans to ship JAAL 1.0, a Java-based Web development tool with its own 4GL next month. The JAAL Application Server uses WhizCode 4GL, a meta language, to interface with and bind HTML and SQL together with one third of the lines of code required for similar applications built in SQL, C, Shell Scripts, or Perl, according to the Santa Clara, California company. The development environment is all written in Java. JAAL 1.0 with the Application Server and development environment costs from $3,000 to $9,000. www.jaal.com
Microsoft NetPC: Internet nowhere to be seen
Microsoft chose its SiteBuilder conference in San Jose last week to unveil the latest plank in its deny-embrace-extend strategy with the launch of its own version of the Network Computer reference profile: the NetPC reference platform, having scoffed at the notion of the original one when it was announced back in May.
The NetPC announcement came the day before Sun unveiled its NCs and a week before the expected Oracle NC launch. The NetPC reference platform calls for an Intel Corp Pentium processor running at 100MHz and up, with at least 16Mb RAM, Windows device drivers and support for its so-called plug and play specification, audio, and video capabilities, and so on. What it amounts to is a description of an average Windows-running PC in use today.
It calls for one of either an Ethernet, token ring, a 28.8Kbps modem, T1 line, ISDN or Asynchronous Transfer Mode connection. The main difference is the inclusion of a machine-readable unique ID for each client, and the ability to wake up the clients from the server. It also calls, somewhat vaguely for "minimal user interaction for installing and configuring devices."
Initial support came from Intel Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co, which is committed to producing a NetPC some time next year as part of its Vectra family. Others committed to making a machine that differs very little from what they already produce include Compaq, Dell, DEC, Gateway 2000, Packard Bell and Texas Instruments.
The 'Net' part of the profile seems to be referring to LANs or WANs, as there was no mention of Internet standards, including HTTP, HTML, or Java. Indeed, the timing of Microsoft's announcement seemed questionable, given that Microsoft was unable to produce any software vendor support for its NetPC - introduced at a developers show. In fact, VP platforms Paul Maritz avoided making the NetPC announcement during his keynote address to the developers. It came later at a private "media-only" event.
This, along with Microsoft's past and present public antipathy towards the idea of low-cost, low-maintenance networked computers, the ho-hum support of its hardware partners, and even the last-minute feel to Maritz's presentation - there were some badly-drawn diagrams used by Maritz in his presentation that showed a typical NetPC box being 3" high, 11" wide and 8.5" deep, with no internal expansion slots, and somewhat confusingly, a 133MHz Pentium chip - would seem to indicate that Microsoft is at least hedging its bets on this nag.
But if the NetPC may have been smoke and mirrors, Microsoft went out of its way, time and again, to suggest that "lowering the cost of ownership for PCs" had become its latest marketing theme. Maritz even had Compaq talking about "lowering the cost of ownership" at its workstation launch the next day in San Francisco. But it is the Wintel axis that's responsible for the rise in the cost of ownership. Maritz said the difference between the NetPC and an NC was that "the NetPC is incompatible with the NC," which we know by now. Meantime, Oracle Corp's senior VP strategic marketing and business development, Karen White was asked if Oracle's NC specification would be supporting the NetPC in the future. She replied "I think not".
Microsoft's software partners were called in to support its "Zero Administration initiative for Windows", which seems to be Microsoft's way of promising that PCs will some day work on the network without causing administrators massive headaches. Microsoft says NT 5.0 will enable users' data to be "reflected" onto the server and will feature automatic application installation, and OS updates. www.microsoft.com
MICROSOFT UNVEILS DYNAMIC HTML - FORMER TRIDENT
While the Microsoft's NetPCs may have garnered most of the media attention at last week's SiteBuilder conference, Dynamic HTML stole the show for most of the participants. This, despite the fact that all it seemed to do in Paul Maritz's keynote demonstration was to create a floating genie that didn't understand voice commands and kept repeating "I must have cotton in my ears".
Code-named Trident, Dynamic HTML manipulates COM object models within HTML allowing Web pages to morph themselves on the fly - without having to contact the Web server. It can be used to manipulate HTML tags, style sheets, texts, or COM controls dynamically. In short, it makes Web pages look Java-enabled without using Java. Microsoft has submitted Dynamic HTML as a spec to the W3C and expects it to be adopted as part of the standard HTML. Microsoft calls it a "central feature" of its recently announced Active Desktop. Dynamic HTML will first ship in Internet Explorer 4.0. www.microsoft.com
Merchant Server starts Microsoft's Normandy landings
Microsoft, last week, announced availability of its Merchant Server 1.0. Platforms and Applications Group VP Paul Maritz says the product evolved in part from software developed by MSN and from last June's acquisition of Unix software company, eShop.
Merchant Server, which will ship as a member of Microsoft's BackOffice line, uses a template scheme to let users design their own Internet storefronts. It comes bundled with VeriFone's vPOS transaction software that takes SSL encrypted orders and processes the transaction with the bank's gateway via the SET protocol. Orders are processed via "pipeline" software that handles administrative details like tax and payment processing. Merchant Server has hooks for any ODBC-compliant database. CyberCash promises to integrate its micropayment technology into the server.
Microsoft announced partnerships with financial institutions, resellers, service providers and third party application developers, and it provided about 40 reference customers who Microsoft claims are actually conducting transactions on the web- some of whom, like 1-800 flowers and Tower Records, were old eShop customers who have, presumably, switched from Unix eShop to NT BackOffice. Curiously, one of the sites we checked out, Granville Books (www.granvillebooks.com), had managed to list only its Microsoft-related titles.
Merchant Server, says Maritz, is the first of Microsoft's Normandy technologies to ship. Also expected from Normandy - now called "Microsoft Commercial Internet System" are: a conference server, personalization system, information retrieval server, and a content replication system. Microsoft also intends to market membership system software, Internet News Servers and Internet Mail Server to ISPs. www.microsoft.com
MARKET COOL ON INDEXING
The danger of living in interesting times was made clear to Fulcrum Technologies last week as its stock plunged roughly 25 percent in the week.
The Canadian search engine company posted earnings and revenues that were right on analyst consensus, but, according to chief operations officer, Mike Laginski, analysts are concerned that Fulcrum's lead product, Fulcrum Find!, would be adversely affected by lower-than-expected deployment of Microsoft Exchange. Microsoft reported 750,000 seats installed last month, less than expected.
Laginski says the drop was "partially gut instinct on the analysts' part," but sources say that the drop came as an unanticipated reaction to a Fulcrum attempt to lower analyst expectations for the next quarter. Analysts are also concerned that Fulcrum's market may disappear as companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM begin to integrate similar indexing products into their product infrastructure.
Fulcrum's main competitor, Verity Inc's, stock also took a plunge last month following its earnings report (OR 16).www.fulcrum.com.
Also battered by the market last week, was EDI company Preminos Software, whose stock was down 54% following third-quarter losses of $2.2 million or 20 cents a share. Analysts had been expecting profits of 5 cents per share. www.preminos.com
Earthlink Network Inc is trying again for an IPO and said it will file with the SEC for an offering coming in the next few weeks. It pulled an earlier attempt in July.
Asymetrix fires broadside at JIT compilers
Asymetrix Corp is claiming that so many people have tried to download beta copies of its SuperCede for Java development tool that it's banned its employees from net surfing while it boosts its T1 line capacity.
The Java virtual machine inside SuperCede is supposed to run Java 10 times faster than just-in-time (JIT) compilers and 50 times faster than interpreted code. It also reckons people ran to its booth at Software Development East in Washington DC last week when the betas became available.
The launch was held on a Trident-class nuclear submarine off the coast of Washington state last Monday. The gag? It "torpedoes the competition." Hyperbole aside, Asymetrix, which was started by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and is run mostly by ex-Sun marketing types, has been causing a bit of a stir with its Java virtual machine.
The Bellevue, Washington-based company says it's JVM implementation deviates not one jot from Sun's spec, but is much, much faster. Asymetrix had Sun apparently very interested in the compiling technology at the heart of SuperCede for Java, but it now looks as if Sun will have its own JIT compiler next year. Sun incidentally also spoke to Symantec Corp for its JIT compiler, which Netscape recently took in favor of Borland's offering.
But Asymetrix reckons it stands above the lot because it's a true rapid application development tool, it says. Symantec's Cafe and Microsoft's J++ are based on the C++ programming model of compile test, link and run, whereas SuperCede for Java compiles everything at machine level, so it's not a JIT compiler, and tests on the fly. So far NEC and Toshiba have licensed it, and more had been promised by now, but none have been finalized yet (OR 6). www.asymetrix.com
NETSCAPE SIGNS WITH ELEMEDIA FOR WEB VOICE AND AUDIO
Netscape Communications Corp has signed up with Lucent Technologies Inc's recently formed elemedia division and will incorporate elemedia multimedia communications technology in with future products, including Netscape Communicator and Netscape Media Server.
Elemedia - it stands for "elements of multimedia" was launched last month to sell software for allowing high quality, low-complexity voice, music and video content to be run across the Internet and intranets.
Its Media Plus range includes voice software for telephone-quality conversations over the Internet, full-duplex speakerphone software for personal computers and Internet phone devices, and CD-quality audio software for applications such as music-on- demand and real-time audio broadcasting. Videoconferencing software is due by the end of the year, according to elemedia, which is based at the Bell Labs site in Murray Hill, New Jersey.
Other elemedia customers include DigiPhone manufacturer Camelot Corporation, communications software house Isochrone Inc, and Internet broadcasting service company Soundprint Media Center.
LUCENT PITCHES IN WITH 56KBPS MODEM CONTENDER
The datacommunications industry is gearing up for the battle to define the standard for 56Kbps analog modem transmissions, and yet another heavyweight - Lucent Technologies' Microelectronics Group - has come forward with its own solution.
And like Rockwell Semiconductor Systems Inc and US Robotics Corp, Lucent is aiming the technology specifically at users dialing into the Internet, and also requires conforming equipment to be installed at both the user and ISP sites.
Lucent has implemented its technology, dubbed V.flex2, on two chips initially: the SDP1643, to be launched as part of Lucent's Apollo range and intended for Windows-based systems, and the DSP1674, intended for installation at the service provider end. Lucent claims to have implemented much of the functionality in software, so that if the industry adopts one of the incompatible standards, its products will be upgradeable. And Lucent plans to offer the software across its other chips. Shipments are planned for the first quarter of next year, with first demonstrations at Comdex in late November.
GENERAL MAGIC ENTERS THE TWILIGHT ZONE
General Magic Inc continues to bleed and gave out another 80 pink slips last week to leave just 200 at the Sunnyvale, California one-time star. It also reported ugly third quarter figures and warned of a fourth quarter charge between $2m and $4m to cover the job losses.
General Magic is fortunate to have raised $95m from its flotation back in February 1995, otherwise it could have all been over already for the Sunnyvale, California one-time star.
It turned in third quarter net losses of $12.4m, after a $1.5m hit, up from $5.1m losses a year ago. But worse still, revenues plunged 77% to just $754,000 in the quarter. Founder and CEO Marc Porat finally fell on his sword in September. Cash and equivalents were some $79.6m on September 30, down $25.1m in nine months, but the interest on what's left is the only source of income the company has right now. At the time of flotation that company had already spent $53.1m developing and promoting its Magic Cap PDA operating system technology and, against revenues of only $2.5 million.
The company also developed a language called Telescript language, that AT&T was using in its Personal Link messaging service. But Java came along, AT&T scrapped PersonalLink and it all started to go horribly wrong for Porat and friends.
Nine month losses were $31.1m, after the same charge, up from $15.2m losses a year ago, on revenues that fell 49.7% to $4.7m. The revenue plunge is due to a lack of licensing revenues as the company looks to so-called intelligent Web agents to get it out of its hole. Magic Cap for Windows 95 was released just after the quarter ended and combines Magic Cap and Telescript.
Porat's replacement, Steve Markman reckons he can see ways to conserve what money is left while growing once more. Porat always said that the company wouldn't make money until 1997, but that too looks unlikely now, and he's not around to do anything about it anymore. www.genmagic.com
CyberCash saw third quarter net losses up at $7.7m from $2.4m before on revenues of $39,100 from nothing last time. Nine month net losses rose to $18.5m from $6.3m before on revenues of $76.8m from nothing before.
Novell Inc plans to maintain its R&D spending at about 17% of revenues as it seeks to make up lost ground in the Internet and intranets businesses, Vic Langford, senior VP Internet and intranet services told Reuter last week. He pointed out that that level of spending had had to include Wordperfect work in 1996. Novell currently spends over $20m on advertising and promotion a quarter.
CompuServe has put on hold all advertising and marketing programs, Infoworld reports, citing an internal memo that also said that at the current rate of spending for marketing programs, CompuServe would have run out of money by January.
Wired Ventures Inc, having pulled its IPO, is now likely to undergo a big restructuring. Analysts expect the company to reshuffle its HotWired Web site unit, perhaps sharply reducing staff, which they said has swelled to be among the biggest for an Internet publisher. One said the company might have been more successfully priced had it spun off as purely a magazine.
FINANCE BRIEFS
LOTUS STILL TO MAKE UP ITS JAVA MIND
IBM Corp's Lotus seemed to be a bit confused as to what it was doing at Sun's JavaStation extravaganza last week.
It was timidly showing a lite version of cc:Mail running through Sun's HotJava on a JavaStation, re-written in Java, claiming it took up just 100Kb of memory. Lotus said it may or may not come out as a product, it all depends on adding IMAP support, which it may or may not do, and the need to link to an LDAP server, which it may or may not do.
Word at the show was that Java looks like being the order of the day for Lotus around the third quarter of next year. But Notes, sorry Domino 4.5, was announced last week in a more complete form than before and the company is promising that Mike Zisman, now the company's executive VP strategy will have a fuller Java/Web story to tell on Thursday at the Lotus Developers' Conference in Anaheim. www.lotus.com
AMERICA ONLINE TO TAKE VAST HIT IN RESTRUCTURING
America Online Inc gave its business its biggest-ever shake-up last week in the hope that it will make more sense when the pieces have fallen.
The headline move was to give users the option of a flat $19.95 a month pricing option, but more importantly, it is moving to much more conservative accounting in a switch that will cost it $385m against its third quarter figures.
It is dividing into three operating units: AOL Networks, to oversee the core on-line service; AOL Studios, for creating on-line programming, and ANS, its network infrastructure arm. As well as taking customer acquisition costs when they are incurred, rather than spreading them over several months, during which many of those customers may have fled, the company has also directly addressed its high churn rate, and says that by more prudent recruiting, it has added nearly 250,000 net new subscribers in October alone.
The new pricing structure calls for two unlimited pricing tiers to provide a "comfort factor" for heavy and medium users, and a $4.95 a month for three hours plan for light users. Extra hours on this cost $2.50 each. The $19.95 option offers unlimited network usage, including Internet access.
It also hopes to keep more customers by offering advance payment rates of $14.95 per month for customers that pay for two years, and $17.95 per month for those that pay in advance for one year. And a new $9.95 per month rate offers unlimited access to the proprietary content only for people that already have a separate Internet access connection. As well as the $385m charge, it will take a one-time charge of $75m in its December quarter to cover the costs of reorganizing the company.
The company admits the restructuring steps and service pricing changes will hurt earnings during the next several quarters, but insists they will increase its competitiveness and prepare it for the "next stage of growth."It aims to be back into profits in its fourth quarter to June. www.aol.com
DISCUSSIONS KEEPS INTERNET OPEN STANDARDS ALIVE
Recent rumblings in the media about Internet Society delays and lack of direction in pursuing a coherent top level domain strategy for the Internet (OR 16) resulted in a flurry of postings this week on the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF's) discussion group on the whether or not the unenforced consensus that has given the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) can or cannot be maintained.
As the week went on, the discussion progressed from a discussion of a specific story predicting the "Internet Cartel's" fall to one on the nature of a cartel, to a discussion on language issues within the IETF, to a discussion of what lingua franca is, to a discussion on human behavior and whether people act because they are compelled to do so. Meanwhile, ISOC has announced that the implementation of top level domains will be delayed by about six months as it forms an ad-hoc committee to study the issue (OR 22). http://www.ietf.org/mailinglists.html
APPLE STILL BETS ON NEWTON
Apple will show MessagePad 2000 - its fourth version of the Newton - at Comdex with general availability in the first quarter 1997.
It includes a built in spreadsheet, word processor, a personal information manager with calendar, phone list, and reminders, connection software and hardware for both Windows and Macintosh desktops and recording capabilities. Calendars are compatible with Lotus Organizer, Microsoft's Schedule+, and Claris Organizer.
Apple used Digital Equipment Corp and Advanced RISC Machines' 160MHz StrongArm processor in the thing. It can be connected with a Windows or Mac OS desktop and comes pre-configured with a browser and e-mail software. Modem and Internet service are not included.
The Newton, which has had several problems in the past may be faced with even greater challenges. Microsoft, who recently hired Steven Capps, Newton's chief developer, and Walter Smith, who wrote NewtonScript, is introducing a "lite" version of Windows for hand-held computers. Apple MessagePad 2000 is expected to cost less than $1,000 but other vendors, including Compaq Computer are likely to introduce their own low-cost Newton-like systems at Comdex.
AMULET GEARS UP TO DELIVER WEB-BASED RESEARCH
Amulet Corp is the latest company to get on the agent-based Internet software to define what you want from the morass of stuff that's out there. Its InfoWizard software is currently in beta, and will be available early next year.
It uses Lycos' search engine and features content from the likes of CMP, PR Newswire, government reports and users forums, feeding the results down to a Web browser. It's not a news feed like some of the other offerings, but a way of collating reports from the Web, aimed at specific vertical markets; high-tech will be the first one live.
The company hasn't decided what verticals to offer next, but will license the sources when it decides. Two year-old Amulet, based in Acton, Massachusetts was founded by CEO Den Ceruttii, late of Wang and IBM, and Larry Floryan, founder of Banyan Systems Inc. Backers include Venrock Associates and Patricof Ventures. www.infowizard.com
ONECAST LAUNCH INTEGRATES POINTCAST AND LOTUS DOMINO
PointCast Inc appears to have been making a good living out of Web publishing via its Internet screen-saver newscast software, but like everyone else it's been eyeing internal intranets as the real source of future profit.
Last week it launched new products under the banner OneCast, along with a business partnership with IBM's Lotus Development Corp. The idea of OneCast is to combine the general news PointCast already provides with internal company news and vertical market industry news. Internal company news is handled by PointCast's I-Server, server-based news distribution software that the Santa Clara-based company began shipping to corporates earlier this month.
Now the I-Server product is to be combined with Lotus' Domino Server under the name Lotus Domino.Broadcast, including jointly developed Domino.Headline software. With Domino.Broadcast, corporates will be able to broadcast information to employees' desktops via Lotus Notes over their internal networks. In order to provide companies with near real-time news feeds, PointCast partnered with Salt Lake City, Utah-based WavePhore Inc, a subscription-based premium content provider. It has also partnered with Vienna, Virginia-based IT services company BTG Inc to help it set up what it calls a CommunityCast network, so that professionals in such vertical market industries as health, government and real-estate can view detailed industry news alongside their public and company news. OneCast products, including Domino.Broadcast, are set to become available in the first quarter of next year, said the company.
DOT Gossip
Visigenic Software Inc will release a Corba-to-DCOM bridge it's calling Visibroker for ActiveX Bridge later this quarter that it's been testing for a few weeks. Work is underway on making it bi-directional, and that will be ready by February, in time to submit to the OMG for its COM/Corba inter-networking part B spec, for which submissions are due next Valentine's Day. www.visigenic.com
Borland's Java development tool, code named Latte, has been christened Open JBuilder. Borland claims the product will ship early 1997. www.borland.com
IBM and Intel announced an agreement to reduce the support costs of high-performance networked PCs with the formation of an Advanced Manageability Alliance. The two say they will work together to define, develop, integrate and deliver standard systems to enable customers to simplify the installation, configuration and management of networked PCs, with Intel starting out by incorporating IBM's Wake On LAN remote management capability into its Fast Ethernet adaptors and LANDesk Client Manager - and the IBM Personal Computer Co will incorporate the Intel products into its Pentium Pro and Pentium desktop computers from early 1997.
MCI/News Corp Internet Ventures CFO Jerry Lyons has flown the coop to join e-commerce software company, InterWorld Technology Ventures.
Microsoft says it will explain what it's doing with its handheld PC OS, Windows CE at Comdex.
Data General's hush hush Thiinline NC division will apparently show its first network computer device at a December Internet show in the US. It supposedly incorporates some third party technology but is a Data General product, not re-badged.
SunSoft Inc has been responding to mumbling from some quarters that applications created using the Active Software Inc Java GUI builder included in Java WorkShop incur a performance hit because it creates a set of shadow classes that must be run atop the WAT advanced windowing toolkit, the SunSoft group marketing manager Jon Williams says all that will be fixed with the release of JDK 1.1.
NetObjects Inc has been winning some hearts and minds with its Fusion Web site building software, and has landed another heavy hitter with the news that AT&T will offer it to its Web hosting services customers. It will be available from next quarter through AT&T Easy World Wide Web Services and the AT&T Enhanced Web Development Package. NetObjects Fusion 1.0 runs on Windows 95 and NT and the Mac version will be out before the year-end. www.netobjects.com
Sun's got Netra js running a bunch of third party NCs in the labs.
The three major US television networks will use Silicon Graphics Inc's graphics systems in their coverage of election results on Tuesday. SGI says data obtained by the networks from polling places across the country will be translated into graphics for broadcast almost immediately, and viewers with access to a browser will be able to obtain the same information on the Web. www.sgi.com
Sun has created a Java Card API which will enable smart card developers to write Java applications for their devices. Schlumberger Ltd's electronic transactions unit has already committed to developing a Cyberflex line of Java-based smart cards for early next year.
Information Advantage Inc has revved its DecisionSuite Web-enabled data warehouse package to version 3.6 with the addition of report prompting and the integration of Windows-based PC tools. Report promoting means the reports can be changed dynamically on-line, and the company's WebOLAP browser front-end has now been integrated with Windows so the same report can be shared across both environments. www.infoadvan.com
SunSoft's still advising developers to program large, mission critical applications in C++ rather than Java.
suck.com reckons Time-Warner's sitting on the Web's future only Gerald Levin doesn't know it. If PointCast's the model to beat then Time-Warner's NY1 channel format - the 24-hour news, sports and weather channel for New York City - could clean up. What's NY1 but a screensaver for your television? If you're not in New York go see http://pathfinder.com/@@dLi*hwUAYjwedJrJ/NY1/
Web21 lists the top 100 Web sites in order of the number of page requests received. No prizes for guessing that www.microsoft.com is number one. www.100hot.com
3Com Corp, which paid $4.1m to get Candlestick Park, the home of the San Francisco 49ers NFL team renamed 3Com Park for four and a half years thought a way to spread the company name even more would be to offer free Internet kiosks at the ground for fans to use, it told Investors Business Daily. It put Dell Latitude Pentium machines with 64Mb RAM in stainless steel and lexan cases to withstand even the most pumped-up fan. When it came to the operating system it was a no-brainer for 3Com: it had to be Unix. It opted for Solaris over NeXT Step and SCO Unix and Windows was never really considered. 3Com said it didn't want to have to keep a person on site just to re-boot the machines all the time.
Excite Inc's bought exclusive rights to the Jimi Hendrix song, "Are You Experienced," and will use it in an aggressive national print, radio, television, outdoor and online advertising campaign. No jokes about dialing in using your Purple Hayes modem, please.
Microsoft Corp's got the beta of Internet Information Server 3.0 up at www.microsoft.com/iis/
Visigenic - which is trying to turn Java developers on to its VisiBroker for Java ORB rather than use Sun's Joe - says Sun's HotJava browser and HotJava Views environment is a solid and reliable front-end and privately thinks Java developers should target that rather than the Communicator and cut-down Navigator browser environments being created by its investor Netscape.
Sounds like SunSoft Inc's Internet Server Supplement known for Solaris 2.5.1 internally as "Jack" - which includes enhancements for speeding performance of hosted Web servers, WebNFS and DHCP server - is laying the foundation for the company's own Vishnu Web server. A whole bunch of other technology is due in the 1997 Solaris 2.6 cut.
Near miss: Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen apparently tried to buy Oak Technologies a couple of years back, the part of Sun Microsystems that developed Java.
(c) 1996 May not be copied
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