Personal Cloud Computing: The Applications
When you buy a personal computer or device, after basic setup, you usually start installing applications on it right? Likewise, the installation of applications onto a personal cloud should be just as intuitive. Installation should be as simple as looking up applications from some application store or marketplace, reading reviews while shopping around, then selecting applications to install and instantly run in your own cloud.
Google Apps based on Google App Engine offers this today, however your data and applications are not hosted or running in your own cloud (on your selected infrastructure) but on Google's infrastructure.
A personal cloud providing the flexibility to run applications anywhere you choose, MUST provide the same level of app install ease. Developers of applications MUST also be enabled to build applications for the new market of personal clouds.
GAE has already established a solid programming model with tooling, documentation, existing applications, and community support. Plugins for GAE development exist for most of the popular IDE's. Looking on Stack Overflow alone we see over eighteen thousand questions and answers by those developing GAE applications:
So obviously a Peer-to-Peer IaaS foundation is not enough to enable the personal cloud: an common application programming model, an aPaaS layer is needed. While developing Subutai Social we did not want to reinvent the wheel with our own obscure PaaS layer. We wanted a programming model that developers felt familiar with, and comfortable enough learning, knowing their investment and knowledge could be reapplied. Besides developers being able to reuse their knowledge, the personal cloud applications they develop are also portable. By choosing to integrate AppScale, an open source implementation of GAE, into Subutai Social as the default aPaaS layer, any personal cloud application could be offered on the Google Apps Marketplace as well as in the Subutai Bazaar and visa versa. We believe and hope this critical choice produces a big win-win for everyone involved in the cloud services sharing economy.