We are the on the verge of the next great stage of technological evolution. The trickle of different trends clearly point to what can be termed a C-cubed future, stemming from the merger of computing technologies, communications advances and the cloud.
A couple of years back Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems believed that the “network is the computer”. Now with the introduction of Google’s Chrome book this trend should soon catch on. It is easy to visualize a ubiquitous device, the “cloudbook,” which would utilize the public cloud.
The cloudbook would be a device that would resemble a tablet like the iPad or Playbook but would carry little or no hard disk. Local storage will be through USB devices or SD-Cards, which these days come with large storage capacity.
The cloudbook would have no operating system. It would simply have a bootstrap program which will allow the user to choose from several different operating systems 0 Windows, Linux, Solaris, etc - which will execute in the cloud – as will all applications The user will also store all his programs and data on the cloud.
The cloudbook will be a ubiquitous device, accessing the internet through mobile broadband. With the blazing speeds of 56 Mbps promised by LTE the ability to access the public cloud for executing programs and for storing of data is extremely feasible. Access should be almost instantaneous. Using the mobile broadband for access and the cloud for computing and storage will be the trend in the future.
Besides its use for computing, the cloudbook will also be used for making voice or video calls. This is the promise of IMS technology, which envisages an all-IP core network that will be used for transporting voice, data and video. As the speeds of the IP pipes become faster and the algorithms to iron out QOS issues are worked out the complete magnificence of the vision of IMS will become a reality and high speed video applications will become common place.
The cloudbook will use the WCDMA, 3G, network to make voice and video calls to others. The 3G RNC or the 4G eNodeB’s will enable the transmission and reception of voice, data or video to and from the Core Network. LTE networks will either user Circuit Switched Fall Back (CSFB) or VOLTE (Voice over LTE) to transfer voice and video over either the 3G network or over the Evolved Packet Core (EPC).
Related content
- Webwire: Google rebrands Market; LulzSec leader turned informant
- Webwire: Apple sued over iPad name; Ministers meet over India 2G case
- Webwire: Ericsson wins India TD-LTE deal; NBN rollout behind schedule
- THE WRAP: Amazon's new tablet, Google's new data centers
- Webwire: iPad generates 1% of web traffic; Apple orders iPhone 5s