From Computers to The Cloud
Computers as we used to know it may be reduced to just a touchscreen monitor. It's not sci-fi. It can be real. Let's look at the trend shall we...
Computers started out with full applications locally installed to it. Everything that the application needed to run and do its work should be available in the same computer. Such applications are known as thick-clients. Modern applications like Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop still apply the thick-client model.
In corporate and enterprise computing, there came about what's known as client-server applications. These applications were split so that parts of it would be in a server and parts of it would be in the user's computer (client). The client and the server "talk" within the network owned and maintained by the same organization, perhaps via LAN and/or WAN. Most business rules and processes are in the server. The client has mostly the UI parts of the application. The client-server model works well to centralizing the maintenance of business rules and processes which would be shared by all clients in the network. This model proved to be valuable and would eventually be the foundation of the computer's future.
The client-server model continued to mature leading towards the development of distributed enterprise solutions, which offered to standardize the security and communication mechanisms between clients and servers. Client-server applications that run on a distributed enterprise solution had better scalability and reliability. Initially, distributed applications, as they were later called, were confined within the organization's network. However, as the infrastructure and communication standards continued to improve, the distributed model would soon find it's way outside of the company's walls.
The Internet opened a whole new infrastructure to speed up the expansion of the distributed model up to a global scale. Web sites are essentially distributed applications enabled by a set of "web-based" standards. These standards empowered web sites to redefine what "distributed applications" and "thin-clients" mean.
Soon, application integration solutions came about utilizing the power of the Internet. The applications became boundless. Distributed solutions evolved into integrated systems. The development was so fast that these systems quickly became services leading to the invention of web services, software as a service (SaaS) and, now, the "cloud".
The general idea of the cloud root from the client-server model but implemented on a larger scale using web-compatible standards. The client can simply be any web-based application... and everything else would be served from the server through the cloud. For example, instead of installing the full calculator application in your computer, you would only need the calculator UI installed. You use the calculator UI to send requests to the server, where the calculation functions are executed in order to return the results to the user screen. If this example is in the cloud, the calculator functionalities served from the server can be shared by thousands of calculator UIs!
Eventually, the idea is to keep most processes on the server and the client would be what it is meant to be: a way for the user to interact with the applications that are actually physically installed on the server only. If the network can be fully utilized, there could be no real need for client computers. Instead, the client can be reduced into an I/O screen. It's very much like remote controlling a computer all the time! You don't really need to install the application to your device anymore. All you really need is to establish a steady communication with the server that hosts your cloud-ready applications... then, everything else follows.
The "cloud" is what the computer would be in the future. Sooner or later, the device you're holding would be nothing more than just an interactive monitor -- a true thin-client to access the "cloud". It's possible that the terms "computer" and "Internet" would become obsolete. We would be referring to the "cloud" in place of saying "computer" or "Internet". You won't say you're on-line anymore. Rather, you'd say, "I'm in the cloud." You don't log on to your computer or to the Internet... you log on to the cloud. You don't buy computers... you register to the cloud.
That's the cloud alright. And, yes, it would be everyone's computer... soon!
Computers started out with full applications locally installed to it. Everything that the application needed to run and do its work should be available in the same computer. Such applications are known as thick-clients. Modern applications like Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop still apply the thick-client model.
In corporate and enterprise computing, there came about what's known as client-server applications. These applications were split so that parts of it would be in a server and parts of it would be in the user's computer (client). The client and the server "talk" within the network owned and maintained by the same organization, perhaps via LAN and/or WAN. Most business rules and processes are in the server. The client has mostly the UI parts of the application. The client-server model works well to centralizing the maintenance of business rules and processes which would be shared by all clients in the network. This model proved to be valuable and would eventually be the foundation of the computer's future.
The client-server model continued to mature leading towards the development of distributed enterprise solutions, which offered to standardize the security and communication mechanisms between clients and servers. Client-server applications that run on a distributed enterprise solution had better scalability and reliability. Initially, distributed applications, as they were later called, were confined within the organization's network. However, as the infrastructure and communication standards continued to improve, the distributed model would soon find it's way outside of the company's walls.
The Internet opened a whole new infrastructure to speed up the expansion of the distributed model up to a global scale. Web sites are essentially distributed applications enabled by a set of "web-based" standards. These standards empowered web sites to redefine what "distributed applications" and "thin-clients" mean.
Soon, application integration solutions came about utilizing the power of the Internet. The applications became boundless. Distributed solutions evolved into integrated systems. The development was so fast that these systems quickly became services leading to the invention of web services, software as a service (SaaS) and, now, the "cloud".
The general idea of the cloud root from the client-server model but implemented on a larger scale using web-compatible standards. The client can simply be any web-based application... and everything else would be served from the server through the cloud. For example, instead of installing the full calculator application in your computer, you would only need the calculator UI installed. You use the calculator UI to send requests to the server, where the calculation functions are executed in order to return the results to the user screen. If this example is in the cloud, the calculator functionalities served from the server can be shared by thousands of calculator UIs!
Eventually, the idea is to keep most processes on the server and the client would be what it is meant to be: a way for the user to interact with the applications that are actually physically installed on the server only. If the network can be fully utilized, there could be no real need for client computers. Instead, the client can be reduced into an I/O screen. It's very much like remote controlling a computer all the time! You don't really need to install the application to your device anymore. All you really need is to establish a steady communication with the server that hosts your cloud-ready applications... then, everything else follows.
The "cloud" is what the computer would be in the future. Sooner or later, the device you're holding would be nothing more than just an interactive monitor -- a true thin-client to access the "cloud". It's possible that the terms "computer" and "Internet" would become obsolete. We would be referring to the "cloud" in place of saying "computer" or "Internet". You won't say you're on-line anymore. Rather, you'd say, "I'm in the cloud." You don't log on to your computer or to the Internet... you log on to the cloud. You don't buy computers... you register to the cloud.
That's the cloud alright. And, yes, it would be everyone's computer... soon!
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