Cloud Computing is dead. Get ready for the "App Internet"

Everybody is talking about Cloud Computing model, how it's making the old Microsoft model redundant. Why do you need a powerful PC, when all of your computing is done in the Cloud?

The bad?

Google is so keen for everyone to embrace a pure vision of Cloud Computing that their new "Chrome OS" doesn't even allow access to the file system. I'm sure that "Chrome OS" will be of value to businesses that need to protect their intellectual property, as a Chrome OS laptop lost on the train won't present any risks. What a boring operating system, though. My hair turns grey just thinking about it. In fact, a vision of the future where our personal and corporate data is stored with a few large companies, in the Cloud, is a worrying and unhealthy one for privacy and even for national security, witness the US subpoena of Twitter data of an Icelandic MP. It's easier for a government to coerce a single company to its will then millions of individuals. And how can you protect yourself from falling foul of future laws if all your data is recorded centrally? But perhaps there's good news on the horizon for those of us who are worried by this nightmarish vision of the future:

The good...

You see, Cloud Computing is now also an old model according to George Colony, CEO of Forrester, as he explained in an interview with the FT. He says the they believe that Forrester believes that Cloud Computing is to be superseded by yet a third emerging model they they call "App Internet", with powerful devices such as the IPad or Android, where apps make use of powerful local processing, but are also connected to the Cloud. Witness the early success of Apple's IPad ("Jesus Pad"), IPhone ("Jesus Phone") and now Android mobile operating systems. App Internet is the latest version of "Smart Client" or "Rich Client", but on steriods.

Why would "App Internet" have an edge over a plain old boring browser? Well, for a start you can offer  everything that's possible in a browser, but much more besides:

1. Apps can make use of local hardware and data that a browser has no access to (e.g. touch user interface, camera, microphone, geolocation, contact book, local photo library, local video and file library, etc).
2. Apps can be billed for no inconvenience to the end user (for one off payments), invaluable for lower value items.
3. Single sign-on into all of your apps (i.e. when you turn on your phone).
4. You can offer a UI that’s optimised for the device at hand (web pages too often scale poorly to mobile devices). Nobody in their right mind would use the Facebook web page from the IPhone when they can use a Facebook app.
5. Far quicker loading times than a web page
6. Don't need a live connection at all times
7. Richer interactivity: Developers can far more when given a sophisticated and productive programming model.

All in all, you get a rich, beautiful, slick and all-encompassing encompassing user experience. 

And the ugly...
App Internet have newspapers and media companies licking their lips in anticipation, as they finally have a means of conveniently charging for content, which might dampen some of the power of the internet to make all information free.


On key disadvantage to the publisher is that an app will need development at least two or three times (iOS, Android and whatever Microsoft will offer in future).


But there are uglier problems too, that stem from the accumulation of too much power in the hands of the ecosystem builder. Apple's new media policy seems worrying, as they want to take a 30% bite (yes, you read it right, 30%!!) out of the newspaper vendor's subscription revenue.


What will happen to the Amazon Kindle reader app on IPad and IPhone? Apple's new policy states: "All we require is that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer be made inside the app".

Let's analyse that statement again: If Amazon is "making a subscription offer outside the app" (e.g. on their external website) then they must offer Apple's in-app option, as "the same (or better) offer must be made inside the app". I imagine that users will invariably choose the in-app option for its convenience, as “In addition, publishers may no longer provide links in their apps (to a web site, for example) which allow the customer to purchase content or subscriptions outside of the app.”

If understand it correctly, Apple's new policy seems such a frightening and extortionate abuse of market power, that feel I must be missing something obvious. I hope that my interpretation of these new rules is wrong, if not, the EU competition commission should have something to say about this.

Has Microsoft been kicked out of the game for good?
There are currently two dominant ecosystems in the App Internet space, but Microsoft have their sights on the segment too with their new Windows Phone 7 operating system, and with a version of Windows that will run on low power ARM processors. Their previous attempts with the old Windows Mobile and Window Slate haven't sold well, but Microsoft have an ace up their sleeve that the the media hasn't been paying attention to; I'm referring to their extremely high quality compact development framework Silverlight, which won't only be the primary development platform for Windows Mobile 7 (which was recently given a significant boost with Nokia's decision to move fully to the platform), but is also found in web browsers (competing with Adobe Flash), will be in the Xbox and Microsoft IPTV, and will also be the development platform used for apps purchased from the new Windows 8 App Store. Silverlight's massive potential audience and its sheer quality as a development platform, together with Window's Phone 7's very positive initial reception, mean that it's too soon to count Microsoft out of the race. Microsoft don't get everything right, but they have in the past gained huge market share from zero in a similar segment, game consoles, starting from a weak position with Xbox, and competing against companies comparable with Apple in their scale and vertical integration.

These are interesting times...