Keep an eye on your own open source cloud environment

David M Williams
Monday, 10 August 2009 10:46

Business IT - Technology

eyeos is an open source web desktop written in PHP, XML and JavaScript. It was designed with the Apache web browser in mind but that’s not compulsory. As such, it will run on Windows, Linux and MacOS hosts.

Being a cloud environment, eyeos is designed to enable users to upload files and work with them no matter where they are or what device they are using, just so long as a web browser is available.

EyeOS ships with an impressive 67 applications and system utilities that include fundamentals like a word processor, address book, file manager, PDF reader and more. eyeos is compatible with both Microsoft Office and Open Office.

A toolkit is provided to enable developers to build their own custom eyeos applications which can then be made available to the rest of the community.

eyeos previously was a finalist in SourceForge’s community choice awards for the category “Most likely to change the world” before winning the August 2009 selected project of the month title. It is easy to see why eyeos has received such lofty acclamation. It is a well-architected system that sets up with a minimum of fuss.

More than that eyeos provides a genuine solution for real-world usage, whether by individuals or by corporations or by academic institutions. You can see a video of eyeos in action inside the Jacint Verdaguer school in Sant Sadurn’ d’Anoia near Barcelona, Spain.

You may also try eyeos for yourself via a free public test server - in fact, you can realistically use that as your own cloud-based server without local setup.

Signing up on the public test server is a cinch – just enter a username and password. No publically identifiable information is requested, not even an e-mail address.

You will find a rich suite of applications from the aforementioned word processor through staples like spreadsheet and presentation, to instant messaging, FTP client, a chess game, recycle bin – heck, even a web browser too!

Each new window opens with alacrity providing a swift and responsive working environment that is a pleasure to use.

You might wonder how such a program can exist, giving away software. Happily, this is one of the beautiful aspects of open source software. The eyeos team raise revenue from training, custom programming, delivering paid support and making branded installations as well as general consulting.