Service-Based Computing

There is now a new web service category called Service-Based Computing.

Allenport is one company working on a product or service in this space, calling it "Simple Computing ... Everywhere."

Independent product analyst Chris Shipley talks and writes about it, including an op-ed in the September 27, 2004 issue of Network World entitled "The dawn of service-based computing." She defines the term as follows:

Service-based computing delivers applications and data from a managed computing platform to a relatively simple end device. In doing so, it puts the onus of managing the computing environment on the service provider and liberates the end user to engage with the information. Service-based computing is the future model for nearly all computing and communications.

My Distributed Virtual Personal Computer (DVPC) concept would seem to fit in this new category, although DVPC is actually a hybrid, allowing you to have the best of both worlds, with a full-featured, high-performance local PC, but bullet-proof protection of your data and application settings on mirrored and encrypted remote servers.