We are in an exciting time for technology and cloud computing. While web applications are not yet replacing desktop applications on a large scale, web applications that are capable of competing with their desktop counterparts are appearing on an almost daily basis. Google, Microsoft, and Apple are all moving, some faster than others, to the cloud along with hundreds of smaller startups. Right now we are seeing the future of computing – cloud computing.

Looking into the future, I see two main possibilities. Either a large company will dominate the web applications market, much like Microsoft currently dominates the desktop, or there will be a set of open standards that let every application compete on a level playing field and talk to every other application.

If one dominant company emerges, there may be some third party developers creating web applications under the dominating company’s rules and there may be some smaller companies trying to compete with the dominating company, but essentially one company will have a monopoly. If, on the other hand, we get a well-established set of standards for web application to interact and communicate, there will be hundreds or thousands of applications by different companies fiercely competing with each other. Obviously a set of open standards would be far, far better. If there is going to be an established set of standards, though, those standards need to be created very soon.

Right now, no one company dominates the web application market, but before long, that may change. Now is the time for someone to establish a set of open standards for web applications to interoperate.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 11:31 pm and is filed under Mobile, Online, Open Standards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.