Everything will be run in the cloud and browser because it is, overall, a better computation model.  However, that doesn't preclude you from running a cloud locally.  Although pretty much proprietary to Google & Amazon until recently, Docker et al and related VM/container management APIs that are mappable to all kinds of implementations will allow apps, administration, networking, etc. to be fluid between commercial and various types of private clouds.

In a lot of ways, this is an elegant solution and could arguably be much more secure than desktop apps in Windows.  Assuming your container system isn't running in Windows, which is becoming an option; one that I won't trust easily.

sdw

On 7/14/15 8:52 AM, dan@geer.org wrote:

Discussing security policy post-OPM debacle in a setting to
which
I have access (sorry to be oblique), it was said by a CxO "We have
to prepare for the day when no software we depend on is run on
premises."

I did not handle this well (think sputtering as an alternative to
white rage).  At the same time, I am probably in a bubble in that
I suspect that nearly everyone I see with a computer (of any form
factor) is already in that situation or, save for Javascript piped
in from the cloud to run locally, soon will be -- denizens of this
list and a few others excepted.

Echoing Lenin echoing Chernyshevsky, "What is to be done?" or,
perhaps, "Is anything to be done?"

--dan