Benefits

Like the Wish N°1, this wish also improves computing systems usability. Because anywhere you are you can access your data and your prefered features. Perhaps not fully if you are not connected, but their distribution allows that at least some functions reside on your current local device. That updates coming from you or to you, will be redistributed as soon as the connection becomes available.

Sounds like cloud computing ? In some ways yes! But there are major differences : First, this behavior is generalized. Second, there is not a central big brother to gather all your data and actions, to limit the way of doing things, to be a single point of failure. Third, if a node fails, the other nodes could take over.

For users, the distribution also means that it should not be different to use a desktop, a mobile device, a laptop or any thing else. Of course the user interfaces have to be adapted, but the features in general have to be similar. Being connected makes a difference because it is often not a choice : you just suffer about it. And even if it is your will, there is no reason for most of features to remain similar.

The benefits above draw in dashed line what distribution is not. The distribution doesn't signifies that everything have to be distributed. A contrario, it means :

1. That every thing must be ready for distribution.
2. That as soon as things can be done locally they must be done locally, even if the results are distributed later. The locality of treatment and storage is applied on any hosts, either client or server.
3. That the distribution perimeter and its depth have to be managed, in particular for security reasons.

An other aspect of distribution paradigm, implies that the data and treatments are scaling horizontally. Taking advantage of all 4 dimensions of our universe. That features are not centralized within big centers having high performance systems relying on “big data” databases. This approach makes things much more efficient and reliable. The IP protocol is a good illustration (despite of some limitations).

The distribution also implies that some kind of notification ways, of broadcasting mechanism should be available. Together with plug and play this could be a great benefit of ISA.

Benefits list :

• Integrated and generalized ways for notification and broadcasting.
• Unification of usability at any time and any where.
• Wide availability of features and data.
• Resilience.
• Performance.
• Big Brother free.
• Unlimited scalability.

Challenges

Here there are some technological challenges, but nothing that could be insurmountable. Several systems already exist that implements some kinds of distribution (mobile in connected/disconnected mode, database replication, cloud computing, etc.).

A common synchronization mechanism have to be incorporated as one base building block of ISA.

ISA must be abstracted of execution platforms that cannot be uniform. But it also needs to run on most of them in a common and efficient way.

Specify the way a decision is taken of what is done locally and remotely, and make the decision explicit.

Wide open mind on distribution in any compartments : hardware, system, data, language, security, network, storage, etc.

The distributed systems are more difficult to explicitly control than centralized or decentralized ones. So it is crucial to define unified way for managing distribution perimeter and its depth.