Over the past few years, there’s been no end of discussions about XaaS practices. Of course, usually it’s one of the many category names within this which is mentioned. PaaS, SaaS and IaaS are just some of the types of service-oriented architecture via browser which are completely changing how we think of computing today.
It wasn’t long ago when a series of specific and separate technologies existed to fill the roles of life. A cell phone to call with, a handheld gaming device to wile away long waits in queues, maybe an MP3 player or little FM radio. Then, we had our PC for the internet, our digital cable box for television, and our gaming console to be childish grown ups with. XaaS wasn’t invented to remove these divides, it was in fact a way to account for these divides crumbling on their own.
You see, the first thing to happen was the less ubiquitous PDA merging with the mobile phone, to create the smart phone. This eliminated the need for a music player, and for many, a gaming toy as well. And along with these, it put palmtop computing into the hands of everyone. With people being able to carry the internet and application-oriented computing in their pockets, it meant that new uses for the internet erupted. Social networks, internet video, and of course, browser-based software concepts which made using them on the mobiles easier. XaaS got its start in these applications,
Now, with the lines between the PC, gaming console and set top box blurring the same way, this means that no matter where we are in the world – on the couch, at work, on the bus, in the coffee shop, on the porcelain throne – you have access to the full fledged multimedia internet and full computing power.
Now, with the internet as it was, this would have to come to a grinding halt, because the mobile device, the TV device and the workspace device shapes are distinctly different, even if they all network together. Plus, standard networks are a bit fractal.
And, given that these devices still might possess differing internal architectures, as well as gradient levels of computing power … the system isn’t as solid and omnipresent so much. This is where the service architecture concept really became important. Once powerful browser script systems such as AJAX and HTML5 became supported by browsers on all chipsets, a platform potentiality was available.
Now, it’s more than just a website design behaving like a program (which is what most think of), there’s more to this. Using the internet’s high speed interlink between devices, clusters of servers can sit in a remote location, running in parallel to be a modular super computer. This super computer can lease out power to run processes (with browser interface layers or client interface layers), thus giving any device, weak or strong, the power of a super computer.
This is called cloud computing, and this, along with cloud networking, storage and data interchange, are all coupling with the powerful concept of software/interface via browser (SaaS) to create a universal high powered system of applications and computing power accessible through any device with a microchip, a screen and input capability.
This idea is called ubiquitous singular computing, and it is what will evolve from these XaaS technologies, and the internet today, into the entity it will be tomorrow. XaaS is the catalyst changing this.
