Has the WebOS Finally Arrived?

SphereOfInfluence writes "Dion Hinchcliffe over on ZDNet declared in a new post that the Web OS has finally arrived and that businesses and IT departments must adjust to the fact that everything's starting to move to the cloud. He cites John Hagel's so-called big business shifts of the 21st century and claims cloud computing, crowdsourcing, open APIs, Software-as-a-Service are the future of the workplace. He goes on to present a compelling visual model of the Web OS circa 2009 and examples to back up some of the statements."

Comments

Wait a minute.

[girlintraining]

Weren't we supposed to be all using thin clients right now in our flying cars, sucking the fat electrons straight from the coax at gigabit speeds by now? Now comes the latest proclaimation: We're going Carebears mode. Everyone into the clouds! Tenderheart's not going to be happy about this. I sense a big carebear stare coming for the Cloud-Mongers.

Re:Wait a minute.

[Hognoxious]

It's just another person predicting a paradigm shift that just won't happen due to inertia and unperceived limitations.

We just need to use a mashup of service enabled architectures to provide a seamlessly semantic experience.

If that doesn't work, then depolarize the bogotronic flux.

Backend mining

[NoYob]

When I read these Cloud Computing articles, I have these thoughts of writing a program that mines the data of all those companies that put their financials and other documents up there. Then use that data for: insider trading, marketing things to them, competitive advantages, and a bunch of thing that can be gained with confidential and insider information.

I think I'm a frustrated crook or security consultant.

Some issues with "the cloud"

[davidwr]

Beware the perils of outsourcing.

If you are using a 3rd party to host corporate data, make sure:

* it meets all legal and regulatory requirements you must meet, guarenteed
* it has performance and uptime you need, guaranteed
* it is responsible for break-ins that are beyond your reasonable control, even if they are beyond its reasonable control. If you can't get a guarantee, pick another vendor or buy an insurance policy to cover you from lawsuits if customer data is compromised
* you can keep backup copies of corporate data in a meaningful format, in case the vendor goes belly up. "In a meaningful format" typically means a published format, but it could be a proprietary format which is shared by many vendors. Open format is many times better than proprietary.

Depending on your needs and size, it may literally be cheaper to pay an outside vendor to "clone" their infrastructure at your shop and train your IT dept. how to use it, so you can keep everything under your control. If, for example, regulatory rules prevent you from shipping your data to Google, you could hire them to build a mini Google server farm inside your firewall and have it index your data and offer "yourbrandhere-Google-powered" web-based "office" applications.

Another option is to use in-house or, if you prefer, outsourced virtual servers which you control access to.

Finally, there's the default option of "keep doing it they way you are doing it now." That option should never be off the table until a better option presents itself.

Diskless workstations at last?

[PingXao]

I have been working for over 20 years with various people who proclaim the dawn of the Era Of The Diskless Workstation is upon us. Cloud computing seems to be another instance of this class. I predict it's going to NOT be the "next big thing". The next big bubble of bullshit is more like it.

Re:Flashing lights and the death of crap IT

[Anonymous Coward]

The "people who should fear clouds" are the people whose network connection is not 100% (and I don't mean 99.999999999999%) reliable.

And let's not forget that all your data is now in the hands of somebody else, who is almost certainly subject to the USAPATRIOT Act.

Re:Flashing lights and the death of crap IT

[Simon (S2)]

The people who should fear clouds ...

The people who should fear clouds are the people who want their data in their own hands, and don't trust third parties to handle it for then. It's that easy, and it's what will make SaaS fail.
We write SaaS, and almost all our customers ask us where we store the data, and if it we don't guarantee them it is in the country they are from they back off. And we write software for small firms only. Bigger clients want the software and the data stored in their own datacenter. They will not trust the "cloud" for that (and I wouldn't either). Not in the near future at least.

USAPATRIOT Act? Who sez I'm Ameriken?

[davidwr]

And let's not forget that all your data is now in the hands of somebody else, who is almost certainly subject to laws in their country that give the local government unfettered access to all your company jewels.

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Flashing lights and the death of crap IT

[Youngbull]

The people who should fear clouds ...

The people who should fear clouds are the people who want their data in their own hands, and don't trust third parties to handle it for then. It's that easy, and it's what will make SaaS fail. We write SaaS, and almost all our customers ask us where we store the data, and if it we don't guarantee them it is in the country they are from they back off. And we write software for small firms only. Bigger clients want the software and the data stored in their own datacenter. They will not trust the "cloud" for that (and I wouldn't either). Not in the near future at least.

I agree, and to be quite honest I think that cloud computing for private people will make some fiz and then leave quietly, too many people are one of three categories: "dont get it", "don't want it" and "don't care too much to get it".