During the past few days, I spent a good deal of time poking around Oracle's big annual conference here in San Francisco. Called OpenWorld, it was billed with the theme "The Internet Changes Everything." I'm guessing that your immediate response to this statement is something along the lines of, "No kidding, Sherlock." But much to my surprise, the Oracle folks did manage to articulate a view of the Internet's future that can't be dismissed easily. If implemented over the next few years, their plan could, indeed, change everything.
We don't usually talk about corporate-type issues here. We're all Linux/Apache/MySQL folks, who are drawn to quality open-source and largely free software. But to some extent, we'll all have to take into account issues in the corporate and small-business arenas. Whether designing sites as the in-house, multitasking computer dude or as a contractor, we'll have to follow the flow of money. If the infrastructure of the Web changes, we'll need to change with it.
Right now there's a prevailing opinion in corporate IS departments and small- and medium-sized businesses that huge quantities of money are being sucked directly into LANs and WANs before disappearing quickly down the toilet. Windows NT Server and Novell Netware, the major networking systems, and their client-side partners are expensive to implement and horrible to maintain. It has been my belief (one shared by quite a few other people) that companies and individuals are eventually going to get sick of upgrading their machines. The coming release of the Windows 2000 Workstation (i.e., NT 5.0), which is said to recommend a Pentium II 450 with 128 MB of RAM, does nothing to calm these fears.
This cost escalation is the problem Oracle wants to tackle. It believes that by providing enough cost-saving features and abilities with its Internet computing model, it can, in part, control the future of medium.
next page»
