First came utility computing, and then cloud computing. Both are essentially the same thing, "cloud computing" being more a 2nd generation version of it - made this concept popular, with the innovations of companies like Amazon.
There was a nice article about Chrome OS. You guys all know that we're big Sun fans. So, we couldn't help but wonder that the Chrome OS could very much indeed be a 2nd generation thin client that could make popular what Sun Ray and other thin clients failed to do.
Sun Ray is great and we love it so much that we've recently been offering it in as hosted service. But it does fail in some aspects. The big one being, multimedia. Things like flash and video streaming just don't work well in a thin client running over the Internet cloud - the processing required is off loaded to a remote server (which adds extra network latencies). Here's how a Sun Ray works, notice also the extra network hop:
Sun Thin Client Hardware <-> Sun Ray Server <-> Internet
Sun Ray does offer great stability (running on stable Unix environment), security (nothing is stored on the thin client), and scalability (the Sun Ray server can be upgraded as needed). All data is stored on the redundant Sun Ray server in a data center. The other benefit to a Sun Ray is that the hardware uses very little power and can be in service for "decades". No need to replace or upgrade the thin client hardware, ever! This is great for enterprises. That's what Sun Ray's have been designed for.
Sun's thin client now also has a software thin client, which now makes it more like this:
Thin Client (Software on Windows) <-> Sun Ray Server <-> Internet
But that is essentially the same as the thin client hardware solution. Media is still slow. You also need an OS to run the software on (Windows/Mac licensing), so that drives up cost.
Conventional Desktops
Conventional desktops also aren't that cheap. Think viruses, electricity charges, and software maintenance. On the other hand, it is a lot faster for media, since there are less hops to get to the remote site/server. However, all data is stored on the local system, it can be prone to data loss through disk failures. To illustrate this:
Netbook/Desktop (Windows/Mac) <-> Internet site/server
Chrome OS on a Netbook
Now, let's get back to the subject of Chrome OS (a browser masked like an OS). How it solves the above problems, for consumers like you and me. So, a Chrome OS is more like:
Netbook (Chrome OS) <-> Internet site/server
What is different here is that, the OS talks to the hardware direct (at least, that's what our impression is). The media processing is also done on the Netbook, where there is plenty of CPU power. However, just like the Sun Ray, the data is stored out on the Internet. So, the Chrome OS is very much a hybrid of the two types of desktop systems. Unlike other thin client solutions, you also run a "free" OS, no longer tied to Windows.
With sufficient applications on the Chrome OS, this could become very popular. While the Sun Ray is a great idea, it just doesn't scale to today's Internet 2.0 applications and web sites. Sun Ray is great for enterprises (for now...) but poor as a consumer media device. Chrome OS could potentially fill that gap. Of course, Sun Ray wasn't meant as a consumer device.
Conclusion
Companies can and do become rich making consumer devices (e.g. iPod + Apple). If only Sun could've invented a next generation version of a Sun Ray hardware that is similar to Chrome OS/Netbook, and works well in a consumer or Internet/WAN environment (again, think media performance), that would be cool.
So, the big question is, now that cloud computing is taking off (amongst businesses), could Chrome OS be a handy tool in the enterprise as well or is Sun Ray still the best in that segment?