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Where Do You Want Your Apps?
By Dave Peterson | March 12, 2008
A recent interview with Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect at Microsoft, got me thinking about the differences between computing that’s local to the desktop, versus that which runs on the Internet. Internet-based applications are nothing new, but the successful implementation of things like Google Docs are taking the concept mainstream. There are several advantages to keeping documents online: Accessibility from any machine, ability to do real-time collaboration with other people (either across the table or on the other side of the world), and immediate updates of the application software. The downside, of course, is that if you are somewhere with no Internet access (or no data signal, if on a mobile device), you can’t get to your documents. And connectivity can fail at the app provider’s end as well as the user who can’t pick up a signal with his Blackberry. The web today is like a rollercoaster, with sites small and big going down, coming back up, going down again… sometimes for extended periods. One of the advantages could also be seen as a disadvantage, if you don’t necessarily want your application updating without your permission.
I think there are three main obstacles to moving applications from the desktop to “the cloud”, and they’re all network-centric ones. First is availability of a network connection: depending on how and where you use the application, this may or may not be much of an issue, but anyone who travels with a laptop or smaller computing device will get it. Even if we can’t connect to the net, we want to be able to do something. In December 2006, there was a snow storm in the
In spite of (or because of, depending on your viewpoint) all these factors, application deployment is moving to the web. Software on physical (and local) disc, whether movies, music, or word processing programs is starting to fade out. In retrospect, keeping everything local seems more like a technological inheritance from the old unconnected world of stand-alone beige boxes than anything that would have been chosen if viable alternatives were available. Now they are becoming available and the patchwork conversion begins.
Topics: Applications |