Welcome to the Party

Helft makes the argument that "Any device, anywhere -- from a desktop PC to a mobile phone -- could give users instant access to all their files and programs so long as it had a Web browser. At the same time, new kinds of devices would be possible, from portable computers that are even lighter than today's thinnest PCs, to, say, a Web-connected screen in a hotel room that would give guests full access to their digital lives."

However, as more and more applications migrate to the Web, imagine how much more of a users' state the browsers will have to hold. Currently, we cannot effectively use the Web and its applications without an extensive database of bookmarks, saved passwords, browsing history, cookies, field autocompletes, plugins, extensions, etc. What good is a browser in an Internet café without all of this personal state? What good are five different browser-equipped devices that I own if each one has its own version of my personal state and all of them are out of sync?

What we really need is not a bunch of devices with browsers, but rather low-cost, easy-to-use stateless devices of all shapes, all of which can connect to cloud-based browsers. A browser belongs to a person, not to a device, and therefore its place is in the cloud -- not on a personal gadget.

With SIMtone, cloud services such as virtual desktops, DaaS/SaaS, PC remote access or Web services are simple and very inexpensive to host and manage, and become usable without a computer, on-demand and on-the-fly, simply and safely, by everyone, everywhere.

As Helft also notes, "Whether Chrome OS succeeds may not matter. Much of the computer world is inexorably moving toward 'cloud computing,' in a shift that could greatly simplify the way we access and process digital information."

While the SIMtone vision differs a bit, we do believe that cloud computing is about expanding the accessibility for users--simply--to all digital information, media and applications.