One commonly shared prediction: A major expansion of the client- server architecture. Graham Greenhill, president of the Open Software Foundation (OSF), said that the industry can expect to see the increased use of client-server concept for "business-critical" applications, along with a movement toward "fully distributed" three-tiered architecture.
For Mike Farrell, executive VP of OpenText, three levels also came to mind, but in Farrell's prediction, the levels are related to information retrieval. In 1995, he said, new agents will come forth that will search the local area network (LAN) for you first, and will then embark on an Internet search - but only if you need them to do that. The third level of information retrieval, also to become agent-searchable, is that good old stand-by, the CD-ROM.
John McDonough, president and CEO of Easel, concurred with Greenhill. Over the past year, he said, "there has been a clear movement toward people developing client-server applications within corporate IS (information systems)." The "first generation" applications have called for "upsizing applications" by "moving them from personal databases."
Next year, in contrast, the industry will experience more downsizing from mainframes, he said. "But this doesn't mean people will throw away their mainframes," McDonough cautioned. Instead, new "hybrid" applications will emerge, which "run on a combination of mainframes and networks." Windows 95, he noted, "will be a real driver for this."
Andrew Filipowski, CEO of Platinum Technologies, was in accord with this general perspective. "For the extended future, anyone who is really serious will probably have a combination" of networks and host-based systems, he said.
Joseph Cauterio, director of marketing for The Dodge Group, foresees an increasing demand for Windows NT, along with a "probable convergence" of Windows NT with Windows 95 somewhere down the line. Microsoft, he reported, has been "spending a lot of time studying the glass house." As a result, Windows NT is becoming "very powerful and robust."
Networks will continue to get bigger and more all encompassing next year, according to many of the industry soothsayers. "1995 will offer corporate buyers many more choices in terms of operating systems, and decisions about which platforms to support will be more complex. Application vendors with solid cross-platform strategies, who can address their customers' needs across these new platforms, will be the winners," noted Hilmi Ozguc, director of product management, OS/2 Product Line, for Lotus.
"With the ability to do call routing and the interoperability of carriers and premise vendors, I think you'll see a significant re-emergence of new voice technologies in 1995," observed John Thibault, president and CEO of Geotel.
Predicted Fred McClimans, principal of Decisis, Herndon, Va.: "Remote networking technologies will be one of the fastest growing markets in 1995." The analyst pointed to the growth of "remote sales offices."
"Relative to that, in the world of 1995, transparent LAN services, running at dedicated 4 or 10 megabits per second (Mbps) via ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) will start to really take off," the analyst added. "And frame relay will finally come into its own, as a cost effective alternative to leased lines."
Kenneth Hamer Hodges, senior VP and chief technical officer at Telco Systems, agreed with McClimans about LAN access, if not about frame relay. During 1995, he said, Ethernet will start to become "the access road" to the emerging "metropolitan LAN," eclipsing ATM and frame relay. Ethernet, he noted, is already such a "pervasive" interface" that existing client-server applications "assume it's the underlying architecture, anyway."
"Low-cost Ethernet and Fast Ethernet PCI cards will become widely available in '95," remarked Michael O'Connor, manager of the Adapters Business Group in Digital's Network Product Business.
"PCI will become the system bus in 1995," chimed in George Nielsen, product manager for the same group at DEC. "FDDI will continue to excel in the backbone and high-end server and workstation space. Look for expanded use of switched and full duplex FDDI technologies in higher performance video-on-demand and multimedia applications," Nielsen added.
Lois Levick, marketing manager for DEC's Emerging Network Technology Group, spoke of the importance of telecommuting to the enterprise. "The role of the telecommuter will be an increasingly larger factor in the business model, changing the complexion of where and how work gets done," said Levick.
"As economics and federal forces such as `The Clean Air Act' provide a continuing impetus for telecommuting, the result will be a reduction of static commercial facilities and a growth in the dynamic distributed networking environments to support this increasing and dispersed population," she reported.
But people are using the ever expanding network for home services, as well as business, according to Art Zins, group manager in DEC's Emerging Networks Groups. "PCs, not TVs, are becoming the `platform of choice, for delivering all sorts of digital products and services - from online magazines to interactive games to home shopping and virtual classrooms," said Zins.
"The rate of growth of PCs in the home is expected to be three times that of PC sales to businesses in 1994, and twice the growth through 1998, according to Dataquest. Research by Link Resources shows the share of PC shipments to businesses and homes converging in mid-1996, and the home market surpassing the business market in 1997."
Meanwhile, what will happen at the workgroup level? Karl Wong, principal analyst at Dataquest, foresees a major boom in calendaring and scheduling applications.
The Lotus Communications Server (LCS) and Microsoft Exchange will not ship until the third quarter, "and then people will be piloting them," Wong said. As a result, "the workflow will be stalled, and companies like Collabra and The Mesa Group will become increasingly important as the delay becomes evident."
Officials of JetForm and Delrina pointed to the importance of forms-based products in improving the workflow.
Wireless FOUND Wanting
But will the most important functions of the enterprise extend very far beyond wired networks? Not this year, according to analysts. "Broad acceptance" of wireless wide area networks (WANs) will not occur until 1996, with the rise of CDPD and the expansion of fixed microwave technologies, said Craig Methias, principal of the Farpoint Group, Ashland, Mass..
At that point, wireless WAN applications will begin to encompass horizontal markets, such as the office arena, as well as vertical industrial applications, Methias explained.
Becky Diercks, program director for the Business Research Group, Newton, Mass., sees a similar shift occurring in the wireless LAN market, not in 1995, but in 1996 or 1997.
Meanwhile, though, companies like Reflections are hard at work on new, wireless-based technologies. Reflections' Fax View is a miniature fax modem now being developed to work will cellular phones, said Al Becker, president of that company.
- Jacqueline Emigh, NewsBytes
