Netscape keynote address turns into product demo

By Patrick McKenna

LAS VEGAS (NB)-Jim Barksdale, president and chief executive officer of Netscape Communications delivered the third and final Comdex Fall keynote. After a quick outline of Internet and browser histories, Barksdale's presentation turned into a product demonstration of Netscape Communicator and a new, intuitive desktop interface component called Constellation.

Mistakenly called an operating system in certain media reports, Constellation is a customizable interface designed to "let information find you wherever you are, on whatever machine you are using," Barksdale said in his address.

The trend from Netscape and Microsoft is to create a desktop experience that will allow users to access the information they want regardless of the source. Whether it is on the World Wide Web, an intranet, hard disk, or a CD, information is going to be made available directly to a users' desktops with new software in 1997.

Barksdale clearly stated Netscape's goal to plant its products in the corporate world. At this time the company will focus its efforts on corporate intranets with plans eventually to bring that technology to general consumer desktops.

Additionally, he emphasized open platform computing. Using two ex-Microsoft employees, Barksdale demonstrated Communicator's ability to access Unix, Windows, and Macintosh-based data.

In his plans to focus Netscape products in the corporate environment, Barksdale said, "Companies spend 90 percent of their computing strategy time trying to keep people out. It should be the other way around."

From Barksdale's view, customers, partners, and resellers, all need to become part of the corporate intranet.

In a press conference afterwards, Barksdale said, "We see ourselves as a player alongside Microsoft."

Netscape also announced relationships with Marimba and Pointcast as the first contributing partners in the development of Constellation. At this time, Constellation is a code-name and more information concerning technical details and pricing will be revealed sometime before the mid-1997 debut of the product.

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