webiOS

Cloud Computing Virtual Desktop a.k.a. ‘WebiOS’
Mayur D. Ahir, Jatin H. Patel
Students, Final Year, Information Technology, K.J.Somaiya Institute of Engineering & Information Technology
Address
ahirmayur@gmail.com, jatinhpatel90@gmail.com

Abstract— ‘WebiOS ’ is a Cloud Computing Virtual Desktop that
includes an integrated Office S uite, Groupware Applications and
a tool kit to develop specific web applications that one might
need.
With ‘WebiOS ’ we will be able to create applications
that will run on a Web Desktop. To de velop applications it is
easier, faster and we won't to have to worry about
incompatibilities with different web browsers. ‘WebiOS ’ has
increased the speed performance of JavaS cript and Browser
Cache S ystem to reduce server workloads.
This means that by using the web browser of any
computer or mobile telephone, we can edit or display our files
(photos, music, movies, documents, presentations, etc.) and see
them just as we left them the last time we accessed the system,
regardless of whether we are at home or in an Internet café
abroad. In short, our data are stored on the network rather than
in a specific location.
The main difference between ‘WebiOS’ and the majority of
cloud computing services is that they ask for our data and they
give us the service in exchange for it. Since, ‘WebiOS ’ is an
OpenS ource application, it is easy to form a collaborative work
environment and we can decide where to keep our server and,
more importantly, our data.

I. INT RODUCTION TO CLOUD COMPUTING
Cloud computing is a way of computing, via the Internet,
that broadly shares computer resources instead of using
software or storage on a local PC.
Cloud computing is an outgrowth of the ease-of-access to
remote computing sites provided by the Internet.
In concept, it is a paradigm shift whereby details are
abstracted from the users who no longer have need of,
expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure "in
the cloud" that supports them. Cloud co mputing describes a
new supplement, consumption and delivery model for IT
services based on the Internet, and it typically involves the
provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized
resources as a service over the Internet.
The term cloud is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based
on the cloud drawing used to depict the Internet in co mputer
network d iagrams as an abstraction of the underlying
infrastructure it represents. Typical cloud computing providers
deliver co mmon business applications online which are
accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are
stored on servers.
A technical definit ion is "a co mputing capability that
provides an abstraction between the computing resource and
its underlying technical architecture (e.g., servers, storage,
networks), enabling convenient, on-demand network access to

a shared pool of configurable co mputing resources that can be
rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management
effort o r service provider interaction."This definit ion states
that clouds have five essential characteristics: on-demand selfservice, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid
elasticity, and measured service. Narrowly speaking, cloud
computing is client-server co mputing that abstract the details
of the server away – one requests a service (resource), not a
specific server (mach ine). However, cloud computing may be
conflated with other terms, including client-server and ut ility
computing, and the term has been criticized as vague and
referring to "everything that we currently do".

Fig. 1 Cloud computing logical diagram

The majority of cloud computing infrastructure, as of now,
consists of reliab le services delivered through data centres and
built on servers. Clouds often appear as single points of access
for all consumers' co mputing needs. Co mmercial offerings are
generally expected to meet quality of service (QoS)
requirements of customers and typically o ffer SLAs.
II. HIST ORY OF CLOUD COMPUTING
The underlying concept of cloud computing dates back to
1960, when John McCarthy opined that "computation may
someday be organized as a public utility"; indeed it shares
characteristics with service bureaus that date back to the 1960s.
The actual term "cloud" borrows fro m telephony in that
telecommun ications companies, who until the 1990's
primarily o ffered dedicated point-to-point data circuits began
offering Virtual Private Network (VPN) services with
comparable quality of service but at a much lo wer cost. By

switching traffic to balance utilization as they saw fit they
were able to utilise their overall network bandwidth more
effectively. The cloud symbol was used to denote the
demarcat ion point between that which was the responsibility
of the provider fro m that of the user. Cloud computing extends
this boundary to cover servers as well as the network
infrastructure.
Amazon played a key ro le in the development of cloud
computing by modernizing their data centres after the dot-com
bubble, which, like most computer networks, were using as
litt le as 10% o f their capacity at any one time just to leave
room for occasional spikes. A mazon started providing access
to their systems through Amazon Web Services on a ut ility
computing basis in 2005. This characterization of the genesis
of Amazon Web Services has been characterized as an
extreme over-simp lification by a technical contributor to the
Amazon Web Services project.
In 2007, Google, IBM , and a nu mber of un iversities
embarked on a large scale cloud computing research project.
By mid-2008, Gartner saw an opportunity for cloud
computing "to shape the relationship among consumers of IT
services, those who use IT services and those who sell them",
and observed that "Organisations are switching fro m
company-owned hardware and software assets to per-use
service-based models" so that the "projected shift to cloud
computing ... will result in dramatic growth in IT products in
some areas and in significant reductions in other areas."
III. INT RODUCTION TO ‘W EBIOS’
Fro m a technical point of view, ‘WebiOS’ is a platform for
web applications, created with the idea to make easy the
application development.
There are currently a lot of web-related technologies, such
as PHP, XHTM L, CSS and JavaScript, so it is required to
master a lot of languages and understanding numerous
concepts to be able to create web applications. In addition,
every web browser has a different interpretation of the code
and every PHP version and configuration works slightly
different fro m the others.
‘WebiOS’ intends to cover those and other problems
derived fro m the web development, offering the programmers
a homogeneous platform to develop their web applications,
using only PHP code and leaving to the system the resource
management, the commun ication with the browser, the
security, etc.
Here are some of the features of ‘WebiOS’,
A. The Desktop
‘WebiOS’ has rethought the concept of a web desktop.
Instead of showing a lot of icons on wallpaper, we've decided
to use the desktop to display the most useful informat ion for
the user. The base screen is a series of widgets with the most
important information about your session and personal
informat ion, to help you increase your productivity.
B. The Base Applications
‘WebiOS’ co mes by default with applications to create and
work with Office files (with a word processor and a

spreadsheet program), calendar, diary, email (with
POP3/IMAP support) and much more. WebiOS aims to be a
great stable suite for comfortable online wo rk, both
individually and with other users simu ltaneously.

Fig. 2 WebiOS Architecture

C. Better& Easier developments
Making WebiOS applications is easier than ever. The GUI
(Graphical User Interface) is comp letely imp lemented in
JavaScript, and the system is based on OOP (Ob ject-Oriented
Programming) and can be expanded or modified by adding
classes and methods. The store methods allow us to save and
retrieve data fro m the database transparently: it is not
necessary to know SQL. Creating RIA (Rich Internet
Applications) is easy and fast. WebiOS is a framework that
combines JavaScript and PHP: there is no quicker and easier
way to create a Rich Internet Applications.
WebiOS is not only a web desktop with its own valuable
applications; it has been designed from the beginning to
enable easy development and creation of new applications.
WebiOS is the perfect development framework for quick and
easy creation of rich Internet applicat ions. It has been
completely developed with open technology and widely
accepted standards such as PHP, MySQL, JavaScript,
Qoo xdoo, PHPUnit, OpenOffice and others, enabling the
system to function on a common web server without any
modifications, and using any standard browser without any
additional plug-ins installed.

D. Collaborative OpenSource work
WebiOS has been designed as a much more social desktop.
We are try ing to introduce new, easy and intuit ive ways to
share files, calendars and more between users and groups.
It is simple to access the WebiOS code, because it follo ws
an open development model with a public SVN, version
control system, which tracks the development of the project.
Furthermore, all of the WebiOS code is documented so that
one can start using it fro m day one. Thus, it is very easy to
create an application. WebiOS has been designed as a totally
extensible system so that anyone can create an application
using PHP and JavaScript and integrate it into the system. Its
free software model and free license mean that the software
can be adapted without problems.
IV. ISSUES WIT H CLOUD COMPUTING
A. Privacy
The Cloud model has been criticized by privacy advocates
for the greater ease in which the companies hosting the Cloud
services control, and thus, can monitor at will, lawfu lly or
unlawfully, the co mmunicat ion and data stored between the
user and the host company. Instances such as the secret NSA
program, working with AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, which
recorded over 10 million phone calls between A merican
citizens, causes uncertainty among privacy advocates, and the
greater powers it gives to telecommun ication co mpanies to
monitor user activ ity. While there have been efforts (such as
US-EU Safe Harbour) to "harmonise" the legal environ ment,
providers such as Amazon still cater to major markets
(typically the United States and the European Union) by
deploying local infrastructure and allowing customers to select
"availability zones."

internally, wh ile others argue that cloud providers have a
strong incentive to maintain trust and as such emp loy a h igher
level of security.
E. Sustainability
Sustainability co mes about through improved resource
utilizat ion, more efficient systems, and carbon neutrality.
Nonetheless, computers and associated infrastructure are
major consumers of energy.
V. CONCLUSION
There are some important deliverab les and expectations
fro m the development of WebiOS, so as to serve the human
community and providing better integration between users and
internet.
• Agility improves with user’s ability to rapidly and
inexpensively re-prov ision technological infrastructure
resources.
• Cost is claimed to be greatly reduced and capital
expenditure is converted to operational expenditure. This
ostensibly lowers barriers to entry, as infrastructure is
typically provided by a third-party and does not need to
be purchased for one-time or infrequent intensive
computing tasks. Pricing on a utility computing basis is
fine-grained with usage-based options and fewer IT skills
are required for imp lementation (in -house).
• Device and location independence enable users to access
systems using a web browser regardless of their location
or what device they are using (e.g., PC, mobile). As
infrastructure is off-site (typically provided by a thirdparty) and accessed via the Internet, users can connect
fro m anywhere.

B. Legal
In March 2007, Dell applied to trademark the term "cloud
computing" (U.S. Trademark 77,139,082) in the Un ited States.
The "Notice of Allowance" the company received in July
2008 was cancelled in August, resulting in a formal rejection
of the trademark application less than a week later.
C. Open source and standards
Open standards are critical to the growth of cloud
computing, and open source software has provided the
foundation for many cloud computing imp lementations.
Most cloud providers expose APIs which are typically welldocumented (often under a Creative Co mmons license) or
GNU’s native GPL; however also unique to their
implementation and thus not interoperable. So me vendors
have adopted others' APIs and there are a number of open
standards under development, including the OGF's Open
Cloud Co mputing Interface.
D. Security
The relative security of cloud co mputing services is a
contentious issue which may be delaying its adoption. Some
argue that customer data is more secure when managed

Fig. 3 Device and location independence with WebiOS

•

Multi-tenancy enables sharing of resources and costs
across a large pool of users thus allowing for:
 Centralization of infrastructure in locations with
lower costs (such as real estate, electricity, etc.)
 Peak-load capacity increases (users need not
engineer for h ighest possible load-levels)

Utilization and efficiency improvements for systems
that are often only 10–20% utilized.
Reliability improves through the use of mu ltiple
redundant sites, which makes cloud computing suitable
for business continuity and disaster recovery. Nonetheless,
many major cloud computing services have suffered
outages, and IT and business managers can at times do
litt le when they are affected.
Scalability via dynamic ("on-demand") provisioning of
resources on a fine-grained, self-service basis near realtime, without users having to engineer for peak loads.
Performance is monitored and consistent and looselycoupled architectures are constructed using web services
as the system interface. One of the most important new
methods for overcoming performance bottlenecks for a
large class of applicat ions is data parallel programming
on a distributed data grid.
Security could improve due to centralizat ion of data,
increased security-focused resources, etc., but concerns
can persist about loss of control over certain sensitive
data, and the lack of security for stored kernels. Security
is often as good as or better than under traditional systems,
in part because providers are able to devote resources to
solving security issues that many customers cannot afford.
Providers typically log accesses, but accessing the audit
logs themselves can be difficu lt or impossible.
Furthermore, the comp lexity of security is greatly
increased when data is distributed over a wider area and /
or number of devices.
Maintenance cloud computing applications are easier to
maintain, since they don't have to be installed on each
user's computer. They are easier to support and to
improve since the changes reach the clients instantly.
Metering cloud computing resources usage should be
measurable and should be metered per client and
application on daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis.
This will enable clients on choosing the vendor cloud on
cost and reliability (QoS).

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A CKNOWLEDGMENT
"Cloud Co mputing: Clash of the clouds"
(http://www.economist.co m/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1
4637206)
"What is Cloud Co mputing?"
(http://jobsearchtech.about.com/od/historyoftechindustry/
a/cloud_computing.htm)
"Cloud Co mputing"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/cloud-co mputing.html)
“PHP Hypertext Pre-processor”
(http://www.php.com)
“MySQL”
(http://www.mysql.net)

“Google AJAX Framework”
(http://ajax.google.com)
“Maria Spínola (Cloud Expert/ Researcher)”
(http://www.mariaspinola.co m)
“Above the Cloud” – Berkeley Research Labs

webiOS

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