Web 2.5: The emergence of platforms-as-a-service
On the road to the elusive Web 3.0 (something to do with semantics, meaning, and context rather than just data, links, and AJAX), core infrastructure is beginning to move from the edge to a center inhabited by companies such as Amazon, Salesforce.com, Joyent, and now Google with its new App Engine.
Call it Web 2.5, where the platform-as-a-service providers allow developers to create Web applications via the cloud and for users to consume them on any Web-connected device, anytime and anywhere. It eliminates what Amazon's Jeff Bezos describes as the "muck," the undifferentiated heavy lifting, such as setting up and maintaining servers, databases, storage, and networks.
It also leverages data centers from large players like Amazon and Google that were built from the ground up to support Web applications at huge, virtualized scale and with high reliability and relatively low cost. And, it creates potentially giant subscription-based revenue streams for the platform-as-a-service providers. They become utilities providing Web services to the planet and managing the high-value personal profile data.
Google App Engine, which was unveiled tonight at Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, offers similar capabilities to Amazon's EC2, S3, and SimpleDB services. Google App Engine is limited to using the Python language, Google APIs, and a relatively modest amount of storage, compute cycles, and bandwidth per day currently, but you can see where this is heading.
Google could parlay its search and advertising technology, market dominance, and its infrastructure prowess into a powerful engine that runs and monetizes thousands or millions of externally developed applications.
Salesforce.com provides a more mature example today with its Force.com platform. It allows developers to write applications, mostly CRM-oriented, in a variety of languages that can run natively on the Salesforce.com software platform and data centers.
(Credit:
salesforce.com)
In many ways it is the Microsoft model--you need a subscription (license in the old days) to the platform to run your application. In this case, "run" means that Salesforce.com provides developers all the software and hardware services in exchange for a fee, which is based on specific metrics, such as Web services calls.
Rival NetSuite, as well as smaller outfits such as Bungee Labs, are seizing on the concept of providing complete cloud-based development and deployment platform services.
Microsoft hasn't yet shown its cards in the platform-as-a-service arena. Nor has the object of its affection, Yahoo. Microsoft has talked about SQL Server Data Services and the grand synchronization mesh, but it hasn't revealed any plans for an end-to-end hosted platform-as-a-service for developing and serving applications from the cloud. Mary Jo Foley has some insight on that topic.
Web 3.0 as envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee is not around the corner, but it is busily percolating. In parallel, platform-as-a-service is evolving, the plateau of Web 2.5. When the two meet, Web 3.0 will have arrived.
Dan Farber is editor in chief of CBS Interactive News, which includes CBSNews.com and CNET News. He has more than 25 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. E-mail Dan. 
The cloud and the network owners will be kings and queens.
Just a thought.
Waay back when I started in high tech, "Platform as a Service" was called a "mainframe" or a "time share system."
I must say buzz words these days are so commonly misused - such as this title. This technology in no way moves us further ahead from "Web 2.0" as it in no way affects content or capabilities delivered to end-users through websites.
If you want to apply versioning numbers, this is more along the lines of Hosting 2.0 or Development Methodologies 2.0. These so-called "clouds" (another very misused term) are simply changing hosting platforms from traditional services and setups.
Also, these new platforms each require their own specific development environments, languages and proprietary (or open) scripting to work. Hence, Development Methodologies 2.0 - but honestly - not even... its just development for a new target environment. As well, something you write for Google's App Engine will not work in Amazon's environment for example.
In the end, these just offer a different way to build things - they don't help us innovate functionality or evolve the Web to the next level. Anything beyond Web 2.0 is supposed to offer data structures and contextual integration way beyond today's; opening NEW possibilities and intelligent processing capabilities.
As web-semantics is a completely flawed concept.
The AI junkies want to create a chick to play with like in Weird Science.
They fail to understand that context and infliction have more to do with the meaning of words then what some RDF matrix can define with billions of hours of work.
-Ben
- by chrysaleides April 9, 2008 12:48 PM PDT
- Having the big boys moving into the 'cloud wars' wasn't a secret at all. It is all just a matter of time when the others will be joining the fray. I will give Timmy Berners-Lee the benefit of the doubt with regards to 3.0. 2.5? Well, maybe cause Paas is going to continue for quite a while.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(11 Comments)At least, us 'small Paas kids' will have more time to play for now until we get bullied or railroaded by the bandwagon. Devs can be quite a fickle bunch :)
Best.
alain
www.morphexchange.com