CERNBox: Bring Your Own Application

CERNBox provides cloud data storage to all CERN users to store, share and synchronize their data across all devices. It is integrated with variety of application providers which empowers the users to work collaboratively. In a non-cloud environment, end users have the freedom to choose the application they wish to manipulate a particular file.

With the move to the cloud, this freedom was lost; it is the administrator of the cloud that decides for the user what applications are available on the cloud. This lack of freedom creates two problems: the first one is that it may reduce the productivity as cloud users have to learn a new tool they were not used to. The second one is that often times the application provided does not satisfy the requirements of users, and these are left performing an inefficient cycle of downloading a file from the cloud to the local computer, manipulate the file locally and uploading the file again to the cloud, dismissing the ubiquity pillar of cloud-based computing.

It is in the goal of this proposal to prototype the concept of Bring Your Own Application and to demonstrate how to regain the right of freedom for cloud end-users