Visual WebGui Reaches for the Cloud

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!

And then there are the security issues – ensuring that the sensitive data being sent to and from the cloud is safe. As we all know, there are no guarantees when it comes to on-line data processing. Hackers have, and will probably continue to, be able to invade your privacy, compromise your information, and steal your money, identity, or worse. Until these two issues are resolved, many users and developers will probably run for shelter when the cloud gathers.

But don’t blame the cloud, says Navot Peled, CEO of Israel’s Gizmox. The problem with the cloud is that web application developers keep trying to use old technologies to push advanced applications through an infrastructure and browser environment that just can’t handle them. “The internet as we know it was built for light tasks – for text and low resolution pictures,” says Peled. “It was not built for the ambitious rich applications with video and other features that users demand and developers seek to build.”

How, then, have developers managed to build anything halfway decent given this lack of resources? By patching up and extending existing technologies – like DHTML, which allows developers to add scripting to HTML pages. Those solutions only go so far, says Peled; they’re complicated, expensive to develop, and insecure by nature.

There is a solution, however, says Peled – one that has developers have used to build over 35,000 web applications so far! The solution is . And, besides all that, it’s open source, a good thing if you are trying to promote your platform as the preferred one among web app developers.

Which is exactly what Peled and his son, Guy, who actually developed Visual WebGui, are aiming for “We expect that within five years Visual WebGui will be the premiere commercial web application development platform,” the elder Peled says – surpassing Adobe’s Flex, Microsoft’s Silverlight, and the other up and coming solutions being promoted by companies like IBM, Mozilla and others. The fact that it is open source has helped spread the word, and currently the platform is being used by groups as diverse as Cisco, Sony, the US Army, the governments of Germany, Thailand, Canada, and several Israeli ministries, as well as thousands of individuals and small companies.

Visual WebGui does its magic by processing everything on the server, and sending back metadata to the browser – very quick and easy on the pipeline, which Gizmox has also upgraded, using upgraded implementations of existing technologies, like Ajax. “Visual WebGui works like a projector,” says Peled. “The application stays on the web, with the user on the client side able to access and interact with everything.” All processing is done on the server as well.

Which makes Visual WebGui unhackable – not “virtually unhackable,” but actually unhackable. “Since we’re just sending metada, there’s nothing for a hacker to monkey with,” says Peled. In fact, the company recently ran a hacker contest, offering $10,000 to anyone who could successfully compromise the platform. The contest ran for three months, and not a single one of the thousands of hackers who tried were able to break the system.

Peled says that his son began developing Visual WebGui four and a half years ago, after working for several years on developing desktop applications – where the only limit to an application’s power is in the mind of the developer. “Guy decided that the web deserved applications as rich as those that could be served on the desktop,” says Navot Peled. The result, just a few years later, is Visual WebGui, which is giving the internet biggies a run for their money. How much of a run? “Oracle has offered $7.4 billion to buy Sun, mostly to get Java,” says Peled. “I think Visual WebGui could be at least as big as Java, if not bigger.”

Related articles by Zemanta

• Microsoft outlines top server challenges for 2010 (infoworld.com)
• The Cloud Computing Bandwagon and Open Source (arnoldit.com)