 |
   |
             |
|
| In this section |
|---|
| Products |
| Technology overview |
| GravityZoo Client |
| MediaZoo |
| Downloads |
 |
This document gives you a brief overview about our technology. To enhance readability, it has been subdivided into the following subsections:
- A brief history
- Bringing applications to the Internet
- The GravityZoo Cloud OS
- The inner workings of the GravityZoo Cloud OS
- Status of the project
A brief history
Nobody back in august 1991 imagined that what began as a one-man project would turn into a revolution, known as the World Wide Web (WWW). The WWW gave us something entirely new: Easy access to something that emerged to an almost unlimited amount of information.
Fifteen years and a "dot com bubble" later, the revolution has passed, the WWW has made the Internet and associated services an integral part of the daily live of one billion people. But up until today, the Internet has neglected to deliver the core promise made...
"The Browser would become the 'Operating System' of the future, nobody would need locally installed applications anymore. The applications would from now on, run 'in the network' instead of 'on the client'. A totally new world of integration and omni valence of applications would shape the future."
In reality it ended with a "big implosion" also known as the bust of the "dot com bubble". Now, about 8 years later, the Internet has become the de facto communications platform for millions of people and businesses. Looking at the "client side" of things, i.e. the actual machine or computer that people are using today, we still see a top-heavy machine with almost all applications running locally. Being "networked" is just an additional feature at best for most applications.
Bringing applications to the Internet
The advent of the WWW saw the birth of the "web application", a website behaving much like a normal application. The major difference with a "stand alone" application is that the web application can be accessed anytime, anyplace via a web browser. Although the idea of using a browser seems compelling, the reality is that this:
- Only works well for a small subset of the many traditional applications.
- Cannot fully replace the richness and interactivity of most traditional (non web based) applications.
What is the main reason the Internet has not yet seen a major adoption of compelling online services, offering rich and interactive applications combined with the undeniable added values of the Internet?
The answer is simple, Web technology was never designed for this purpose, so we're currently stuck with second-best workarounds like stuffing holes with plug-in technology (Flash, Java) and using heavy client-side scripting (e.g. AJAX technology). Thereby actually destroying the whole idea behind letting the server side running the application and also destroying the very hypertext context of the World Wide Web.
The GravityZoo Cloud OS
So, what can you do with the GravityZoo Cloud OS? The answer can be both complicated and simple. Let's start with the simple answer. The GravityZoo Cloud OS allows any developer to build or port an application to run independently at any time, any place and across any device, provided a GravityZoo Client is available.
Now, let us continue with the complicated answer. The GravityZoo Cloud OS provides a set of basic building blocks to build something larger. Just as Microsoft Windows (or MacOS X, or Linux, etc) should be a basic building block for other applications that run on your computer, the GravityZoo Cloud OS provides such a set of building blocks for applications that run in a networked environment, of which the Internet is the ultimate one.
So, you can actually build applications that run on the GravityZoo Cloud OS, but you can also build other building blocks, small and large, that can be used to build other applications, running on the GravityZoo Cloud OS. The only major difference now is, that those applications and all those building blocks can be available to anyone, without ever the need of storing or installing a local copy of those building blocks on any client.
Where lies the major difference between the GravityZoo Cloud OS and other solutions such as web applications. The short answer is: web applications only pretend to be real applications, GravityZoo applications are real applications, with all the features one can get of stand-alone applications, including all the additional features resulting from the fact that applications now "live" in a totally networked environment.
The inner workings of the GravityZoo Cloud OS
To understand the major difference between popular technology like web applications, Operating Systems, stand alone applications, traditional client-server applications and terminal-based applications (including Terminal Server and Citrix implementations), one has to take a quick look under the hood.
The GravityZoo Cloud OS employs patent pending technology to achieve its goals. It can be divided into three major components, all fulfilling a special and important task:
- The client component; this is the software that runs on the client. The client can be almost anything that contains a microprocessor and is able to run some kind of operating system that we can somehow support. Possible clients include Windows, Linux and Unix machines, Macs, Thin clients, set-top-boxes, mobile phones, PDAs, but also refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, etc.
- The Application Processing component; this can be anything from a single computer to tens of thousands of computers or servers called application servers. The Application Processing component, also often referred to as "application layer" actually runs the applications. The Application Processing component can be located in one or more datacenters that are connected to the Internet via high speed and redundant connections, but also on the potentially millions of end-user PCs connected to the Gravity Cloud OS via the GravityZoo Client.
- The Storage component; also known as "Central Object Store". The storage component usually runs near the application processing component, to optimize latency and bandwidth between the application processing component and the storage component, but this is not a technical necessity. The storage component can also run on a single computer to a cluster of a mere unlimited number of servers or computers.
So how do we get applications running on application servers, somewhere remote, while giving the client user the feeling the application actually is there? The answer lies in the communication between the client component and the application component. The GravityZoo Cloud OS employs a way to replicate only the important parts of the application by employing a specific "shared object model".
Status of the project
The GravityZoo Cloud OS is already beyond the "proof of concept" phase and is already being deployed for different purposes by our customers. Currently a team of highly skilled developers are actively developing it further. Currently, a Beta version of the client running on Windows and backend implementation running on most available platforms is available for internal testing and demonstration purposes.
In essence GravityZoo is the 1st real Cloud Operating System, making applications, including legacy, accessible via all devices connected to the internet, be it a PC, Mobile or an embedded device. But, and this is very important, without the need for a browser.
