The underlying philospphy of SlapOS was created by ViFiB, a small innovative company which is credited for inventing “Distributed Cloud Computing” (XXX reference).
The first idea in SlapOS is to consider that “everything is a process” and that a system is made of processes which exchange information through network services based on various protocoles: HTTP; memcached, mysql, etc.
The second idea in SlapOS is that the best way to create a reliable and efficient cloud computing system is to follow the original principles of the Internet: distribution and simplicity. Rather than trying to build one or two reliable data centers with redundant network, redundant power supply, redundant air conditionning, redundant staff, etc. in order to reach 99.999% availability, SlapOS aggregates unreliable hosting, such as home cloud or low cost dedicated servers, and by combining them reaches a reliability of 99.9999%. SlapOS is in reality much more reliable than traditional approachs to Cloud because, by selecting independent sources, SlapOS can survive any case of force majeure: strike, earthquake, political decision, eletricity breakout, etc. That said, SlapOS can also be used to operate traditional data centers more efficiently.
The third idea in SlapOS is that any intelligent process to ensure redundancy, data replication or energy savings should be implemented by the application itself rather than by the infrastructure. This is in line with the original ideas behind the Internet : a stupid network running clever applications. By taking into account usage or data specificities, optimal policies for redundancy and energy savings can be implemented.