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What's an Application Cloud?

An "application cloud," or rather the server that powers it, is a relatively new type of product which combines the functionality of several other and perhaps more familiar product types namely BPM, ESB and SOA based products. Whereas the latter two types are primarily service focused - a cloud server is application focused. Its primary goal in life is to facilitate the development, testing and deployment of complete applications into the cloud - and once deployed, to then manage the interactions between them.

An "application cloud," depending upon how it is hosted, is either public or private. If viewed collectively, the collection of all public application clouds represents - you guessed it - the internet, or in other words, a "global cloud" of seamlessly interconnected applications. This notion, while inspiring, is not new. In fact, it is a vision which began during the dot.com boom of the late 90's ...

"When computing moves onto the Internet, the end result is that the Internet itself becomes the computer. Each individual piece of computing becomes a component service - an Internet application engine - within the interconnected global infrastructure. The task that's now under way is the creation of an Internet operating system that allows those many components to interact seamlessly within the infrastructure. When the process is complete, the Internet itself becomes a shared global platform for the automation of commerce - along with every other form of collaborative human endeavor - built from millions of participating components and services."

Phil Wainewright, October 5, 2000 *

Due, in large part, to the standardization of many key internet related techonologies and to the collaboration and innovation fostered by the open-source movement over the last ten years, the vision of a "shared global platform for the automation of commerce" is now a very real possiblity. And alakai will be the software that powers the global cloud - or at least a small part of it :-)