Vlad Hrybok's Tech Notes - HttpVPN

HttpVPN is Released - First Public Beta is Launched

Vlad Hrybok — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:35:58 GMT

HttpVPN™, a redistributable component for hosting web applications targeting home users and small businesses, is released as Beta. It makes web applications accessible on the web at MyOwnSecureWeb.com right after the installation and does not require users to fiddle with routers, set up DMZ, etc. Just a consumer-friendly, secure self-hosting of web apps.

Market Research Report on Home Servers

Vlad Hrybok — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:35:19 GMT

Free Forrester Research report on Home Servers market (PDF).

UltiDev HttpVPN is in an incredible position to be the winner in this market.

Version 1.7 of "MP3 Player Sample for ASP.NET with AJAX" Looks Good

Vlad Hrybok — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 15:02:17 GMT

After releasing build 1.7 of my open-source redistributable ASP.NET-based MP3 player application, I used it for a while and I am pretty happy with its stability and functionality. The design goal for the project was to demo a concept of an easily-redistributable web application for SOHO market. With unquestionable popularity of web-based applications in the business world, removing complexity of the web hosting infrastructure to make home web applications possible as a category is poised to be the next big thing.

Microsoft "Acropolis" six years too late. I liked CCmdTarget of MFC back in nineties.

Vlad Hrybok — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 14:42:13 GMT

Microsoft is showing off its new Acropolis framework for .NET. It seems to be a little more than good old CCmdTarget of late MFC.

Back in 2001 when I was making a transition from C++/MFC to C#/.NET two things I missed the most were C++ templates and CCmdTarget/Doc/View architecture of MFC-based Windows UI. I could not believe Microsoft didn't port CCmdTarget at the time and naturally wrote my own. But pretty soon it was obvious that with C# and Visual Studio .NET writing ASP.NET web applications was easier than making Windows UI apps, and people wanted web UI more than windows UI.

Combine dwindling demand for Windows UI with inferior development tools and you end up in the situation where software architects don't even debate whether their next enterprise application should have Windows UI or web UI. It's assumed and understood that it will be a web-based application. If you think an application needs to have Windows UI - you will face an uphill battle convincing other project stakeholders it's the right way to go.

Simply put, Windows UI is so out, and web UI is so in that incremental improvements in Windows UI world like WPF and Acropolis is too little and way too late to save the day. We've got AJAX, thank you very much. In my arrogant opinion enterprise apps will not go back into Windows UI world. The last bastion of Windows UI applications is SOHO market, but that is about to change with HttpVPN making it possible to make easily redistributable web applications for consumers and small businesses. Once that happens, Windows UI will become just gaming and other graphics-heavy applications platform.

Software platform evolution: from desktop OSes to World Wide Web to UltiDev HttpVPN

Vlad Hrybok — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 03:27:32 GMT

Think what would happen if Microsoft was giving away Windows for free to everyone, and would also be giving away Visual Studio to developers, but taking %% of every sale of every program ever made for MS Windows. Think of how much more money would they would have made? Could Bill Gates have become a first trillionaire?

First of all, no worries, I am not a nut who writes another OS. Creating a new operating system is WAY too complicated, costly and most importantly financially risky: OSes are commodity - it's impossible to change the world by creating another OS now. Instead, I am creating a new platform. What is platform? To give a definition, platform is an operating environment for programs, and a user interface conduit for users. To give a few examples: Internet is platform: back-end web server is an operating environment for programs and browser is a conduit for the UI; every operating system is a platform: Windows, Linux, MacOS – their APIs and drivers form an operating environment and OS desktop and windows is a UI conduit; web browser is a platform too, albeit a limited one – it can run client scripts and therefore it’s an operating environment and a UI conduit at the same time. You get the idea…

Platforms differ in reach and complexity. Operating systems make a somewhat mediocre platform: they have limited reach – contained by the hardware they designed for, by how incredibly expensive it is to make an OS, and by how hard it's to learn to develop applications for a new OS. Adoption threshold for a new OS is very high. Web, on the other hand, is a very good platform: HTTP protocol is insanely simple, web development is relative simple and mastered by ever-growing legions of developers, web is not constrained by hardware, and finally web has a virtually unlimited reach. Curiously, web as a platform is built on top of other platforms - underlying disparate OSes running web server back-end software and user browsers. it’s a platform layered on top of other platforms – OSes.

The drawbacks of the Web as a platform include:

Deploying and operating web apps is complex and costly. It is very hard to make an application accessible on the web: all the routers, firewalls, networking, DNS servers, domain names leases, IP addresses - everything involved in deployment of a web application is much more complex from user’s standpoint compared to regular program with a "pop-in a CD and have it installed" type of deployment;
Web applications are hard to market. From developers’ perspective business models for selling web app is limited to big-ticket sales to businesses who have budget and skills necessary to run web-facing infrastructure.

Now, imagine World Wide Web with above-mentioned problems removed. That is what I am doing: a new web-based platform that has user reach as wide as current Internet, but removes application deployment and marketing hurdles that are limiting web application usage right now. That’s a unique innovation right there. “But hey, there’s more!” Another unique innovation is the business model: I am not going to sell this platform to users, or development tools to developers. All will get it for free. The catch? All software that uses our platform can only be sold and bought using channels belonging and controlled by UltiDev, and like eBay we are going to take %% of every application sale.

You may have some concerns, like will developers find this new platform attractive enough to spend effort learning it and making programs for it? The answer is no, they won’t. Because they won’t need to. The beauty of it is that application developers can take their existing skills and even their already-built applications and simply package them together with our new platform components and ship it to users. Every member of millions-strong army of web developers worldwide is ready to take advantage of this new platform.

You may also wonder how complex is this new platform? Will it take billions of dollars an decades to create it? Well, it’s complex enough to take two years to develop, but the good news is that it’s virtually finished and working pre-alpha releases are deployed.

Small detail: the platform described above is called HttpVPN™ and some additional technical information is available at http://ultidev.com/Products/httpVPN/.

Windows Home Server is poised to become yet another target platform for UltiDev products

Vlad Hrybok — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 03:22:58 GMT

Just-announced Windows Home Server is a good news for UltiDev LLC even though Windows Home Server currently is not much more than glorified Network Attached Storage and an automatic backup system. Windows Home Server is based on Windows 2003 Server and therefore does not have TV recording functionality for Media Center Edition one would expect from household server. But despite being driven by Windows 2003 Server, Windows Home Server does not seem to have web server and email server on it.

Our HttpVPN and Cassini Web Server products will make MCE attractive for every developer who can make a web-based application. To be truly useful household platform, all software for household servers should web-based and should accessible securely and reliably on Internet as well as and inside the home network. Good news for us is that we do it while Microsoft does not seem to.

I think people will feel much more comfortable when their data is stored on their own servers at home and being accessible everywhere using secure web connection, instead of having data stored on third party servers. Real "web 2.0" (God, I hate this marketing gimmick!) is not only user-generated content, but user-generated content stored on user's own servers and securely accessible from everywhere. This is what we are making happen with HttpVPN, which makes every programmer who can write ASP.NET, JSP, PHP, Perl, Python, ASP, Cold Fusion (or whatever else web development tool he/she is using) a potential winner in the huge but completely untapped market of home server software.

I feel good to be at the right place at the right time. You need to join in.