A Ghost in the machine

Having worked in some form of alternative desktops for many years -- from alternatives to Windows, Linux-based desktops and applications, thin clients and most recently desktop virtualization solutions -- the other day something very different caught my eye: G.ho.st or Globally Hosted Operating System.

So there are two unique and newsworthy angles with this story. I’ll start with the one that seems to have gotten the most press: the company is based in Israel but all the programming and code jockeys are Palestinians working in the West Bank. In other words, these two traditional enemies have teamed up to create a really cool technology software offering although most have not been able to meet face-to-face. My guess is that they have purchased some very expensive video teleconferencing equipment and work virtually. I do hope that some very smart marketeers at Plantronics or Cisco have provided them with either free or seriously discounted hardware because this angle to the company is not only unique but would make a tremendous success story. Hopefully the Israeli government will also notice that working together is a whole lot more economically conducive than fighting -- or, in this case, limiting travel between the two regions. Considering neither the West Bank nor Israel is very large I’m sure that the Palestinian contingent isn’t physically more than a few miles from the Israeli half of the Company. It’s too bad they can’t physically connect.

With that said, the truly interesting part is that they have done so much virtually maybe the lesson for the rest of the world is that you really don’t need the physical barriers that we have come to take for granted. The G.ho.st solution -- and I’ve only done some cursory trials with the software provide a very unique and quite capable approach to virtualizing a desktop. They have virtualized the entire GUI, application and file base to a cloud and have optimized the delivery to run fairly well over an internet connection. In other words you can access your true desktop with a desktop experience (as opposed to a file or application experience) from a web browser. You get file to device synchronization (plug in your cell phone or MP3 player and it will synch content), access to applications and drag and drop file management right from the web interface. Oh, and by the way, the web interface looks an awful lot like a Linux GNOME desktop. (For those of you not familiar with GNOME just replace what I just said with “Windows desktop.”) There are many companies looking to control the desktop and it’s functionality by moving the OS and applications back to a server but this is the first that actually delivers a full Windows replacement as a web service.

We hear so much hype around Cloud Computing -- and interestingly not much about its greatest challenges such as analytics or cross platform BI -- but I’ve not seen an alternative to the entire client delivered via Cloud Computing until now. Unfortunately you’ll always need some kind of hardware platform to deliver access but I can now see a future where that platform becomes as vanilla and general purpose as a Netbook has promised but not yet delivered.

For more information check out: http://g.ho.st/