In Q3 of 2007, Xcerion intends to release a new, free operating system that has the potential to fundamentally alter the economics of software development.
Meet XIOS.
If successful, it may be able to alter the power Microsoft draws from control of the desktop, to beat Google at its software-as-a-service play, and to make commodity Linux boxes more doable alternatives as a computing platform for the masses.
"What Skype did for telephony, we want to do for software development," said CEO Daniel Arthursson.
For the past five years, Xcerion has been working on an XML-based Internet operating system (XIOS) that runs inside a Web browser. In a way, XIOS is an abstraction layer that sits atop a true operating system like Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows, just as does Transmedia's Flash-based Glide Next media sharing environment.
But XIOS aims to provide lower-level functionality. It's not simply an interface for media sharing. Rather, it's a complete XML-based operating system and development platform that replicates the desktop computing experience from inside the browser and adds the benefits of cloud-based computing, where applications and data are available over the network.
Watch it in action and you'll see a visual representation of the threat it poses to Windows: Double-click on the application and the familiar desktop interface appears inside the browser window. Expand the browser window in full-screen mode and the Windows desktop vanishes beneath it. Of course the XIOS environment could just as easily look like the Mac OS desktop or something else entirely. This is what Microsoft feared Netscape would do, turn its main asset, the operating system, into middleware.
There are several reasons why one might want to run an XML-based operating system in a Web browser: security, data portability, freedom from hardware and platform lock-in, cost, built-in collaboration, and development productivity.
While no computer system is completely secure, XIOS should be immune to most of the malware in circulation today because it runs in a sandbox, a virtual environment where code can be executed without risk to computing resources on the outside.
But XIOS is more than just a thin client and network storage. As an operating system -- yes, it has a command line if that's what you want -- it operates offline, storing files and running applications locally on a virtual hard disk. This is a big deal. XIOS achieves offline functionality that Adobe aspires to with its Apollo platform. Try using Google Spreadsheets offline. It doesn't work. XIOS can be toted around on a USB flash drive with, say, Firefox and every computer you plug it unto becomes your computer, with your files.
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