Application Evolution

With the advent of the Internet, web services, ad-hoc networks and the wide variety of wired and wireless options for accessing the network, we are seeing applications evolve from simple client-server systems to distributed systems that can leverage both local and remote services.

The Software Dial-tone™

As the number of networked devices and application services continues to grow, it has fast become a requirement for applications to not only interoperate but to seamlessly share resources, processing power and content. To date, no software infrastructure has been available to address these needs. As a result emerging solutions that have made it to the market place have been standalone systems with minimal support for leveraging distributed services. Network services are expected to be available any time, anywhere, and from any computing device. Much like a telephone dial-tone, the set of software services in the network will serve as a Software Dial-tone for network devices.

Distributed Applications

By combining services at runtime, Strings can enable functionality by leveraging services that are on a single machine or services that are distributed over a network. To make this possible, Strings can advertise Beads as network services and other Strings based systems can use these services to create distributed applications that incorporate functionality across several systems in the network. Since Beads are discovered and combined at runtime, Strings is able to select the correct and optimal set of Beads to enable any two services to communicate. This provides an unprecedented level of flexibility in accessing network services since applications no longer require prior knowledge of the interfaces to these services. The ability of Strings to provide and use this Software Dial-tone enables every Strings device to be as powerful as the network of devices around it.