A Map of Mobile & Web & IOT Technologies

A map of mobile, web, and IoT technologies

Web, Mobile, and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies drive all modern personal and commerce interactions.  Web, mobile, and IoT technologies each have two halves - 1) the client half and 2) the server half. The client is the user facing device such as your phone or web browser. The server is the machination running in the background that the user does not see. The client-server combined offers compute, storage, or networking to its end user.  This architecture has been in use for decades.

The client side is user facing, and user view can be broken down basically into three viewing models: 1) web 2) mobile 3) internet of things. Web is essentially a web browser such as Firefox/Chrome/Safari running on your laptop with the help of HTML5/CSS3/JaveScript/AJAX.  Mobile is a smartphone such as an Apple iPhone or Samsung Galaxy  that can run apps natively in Android (Java) or iOS (Objective-C or Swift). IoT  are electronic gadgets that don't require rich user interaction, but instead have dedicated displays, buttons, and sensors. IoT devices usually run on a small Real Time Operating System (RTOS) or Linux running with a JavaScript environment called Node.JS. 

The server side is the compute/storage/networking machine that is not user facing and solely serves the client. Servers can be 1) on-premise or 2) cloud/off-premise. On-premise servers are simply compute/storage/networking machines that sit in the company property. On-premise is a term that was coined with the advent of CLOUD compute/storage/networking.  For those who have been computer users for the past 20 years,  on-premise server is not a foreign concept. Cloud/off-premise are compute/storage/networking servers that located outside of the company - in an etheral place affectionately called the "cloud".  For most consumers, the cloud offers software without the need to install it on your device. For example, if you have been using Facebook, LinkedIn, or Gmail, you have been using the cloud.  Cloud/off-premise servers are built on a hardware and software template. One popular template is called Linux Apache MySQL Python (LAMP).  can offer Software As A Service (SAAS), Platform As A Service (PAAS), or Infrastructure As A Service (IAAS).  Amazon AWS has been a leader in this field.

Usually bound by the hip but not exactly the same as cloud is the same is the term virtualization.  Virtualization basically allows physical servers (compute/storage/networking) to be converted into software. Once in the software form, these compute/storage/networking servers can be controlled via management software so that the servers can be started, stopped, moved around, and copied. The ability to do this make cloud compute/storage/networking possible.