Expanding the Cloud: A Component-Based Architecture to Application Deployment on the Internet

Cloud Computing allows us to abstract distributed, elastic IT resources behind an interface that promotes scalability and dynamic resource allocation. The boundary of this cloud sits outside the application and the hardware that hosts it. For the end user, a web application deployed on a cloud is presented no differently to a web application deployed on a stand-alone web server. This model works well for web applications but fails to cater for distributed applications containing components that execute both locally for the user and remotely using non-local resources. This research proposes extending the concept of the cloud to encompass not only server-farm resources but all resources accessible by the user. This brings the resources of the home PC and personal mobile devices into the cloud and promotes the deployment of highly-distributed component based applications with fat user interfaces. This promotes the use of the Internet itself as a platform. We compare this to the standard Web 2.0 approach and show the benefits that deploying fat-client component based systems provide over classic web applications. We also describe the benefits that expanding the cloud provides to component migration and resources utilisation.