In what looks like characteristic impulsiveness on Oracle Corp CEO Larry Ellison’s part, the computer industry’s most eligible bachelor decided last Tuesday he was going to give a sneak preview of the Oracle network computer software running on an Intel-based machine Oracle itself cobbled together from PC hardware. He showed the device and software at the Millennium Conference in San Francisco. It included the HatTrick presentation software, InterOffice groupware, a Java word processor and a Nestcape browser. Ominously for Advanced RISC Machines Ltd, that makes the ARM processor which the original Oracle NCs were to based on, Network Computer Inc (NCI), the Oracle subsidiary said the main push into the corporate space will be with Intel-based machines, not RISC. And as the corporate market is the only one Oracle and its manufacturing partners are really interested in for the time being. Oracle and those building the NCs are due to reveal their hands in Japan on April 15. Ellison apparently went off on a quasi-religious tangent about the internet being the common heritage of all mankind and it being Micorosft versus mankind with Microsoft having only a slight lead. The software includes the NC System Software, NC Server and the NC Card software. Ellison apparently demonstrated the Intel machine the previous week to The Research Board, a gathering of around 50 chief information officers from the world’s largest companies. The last person the group deigned to allow to talk to them was Steve Jobs back in 1984 with the first Macintosh.
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