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The following piece was written by David Shamah for digitalisrael.net

Once there were browser wars – as in Mozilla vs. Netscape vs. Internet Explorer. But browser wars are so 1999. A decade later, the war has migrated from the browser in your computer to a place far from your computer’s desktop – “the cloud.”

Up above – or rather, across the country or even the world, where the banks of servers that make up the cloud reside – applications are running and data is churning back and forth between servers and clients (ie, your desktop/laptop’s browser). By centralizing applications on servers and enabling clients to access them on an as needed basis, companies and individuals can save money on storage costs, updating software and systems, reduce IT personnel costs, and so on. With the cloud holding so much promise, major internet players are introducing platforms software developers can use to build applications that will work flawlessly on the desktop, despite the fact that they are located thousands of miles away.

But all is not clear in the cloud’s future. The development of rich internet applications has been stymied by several factors, including security concerns, the inability of browsers to handle the data being thrown at them, as well as the lack of internet infrastructure available to deal with ambitious applications both developers and users are itching to be able to use on the net. As all who have tried to access an ambitious web application online know, skips and stops are endemic on many sites, and there is much tapping of fingers and fussing with one’s wristwatch while waiting impatiently for the stupid hourglass (or rainbow circle, for Mac users) to hurry up and let us work already!

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