GP.Workspace

This Pattern models the generic (user) digital workspace, which acts as a gateway between the digital and physical world. The goal of this pattern is to provide a digital consumer (applications and/or other ICT systems) a means to interact with the physical world, including the human users of ICT.

While the Pattern can be used to model many systems varying from smart watches to multifunctional workgroup printers, its main application is in the modelling of a user workspace. By and large there are three types of user workspace: Note that while the fat client and thin client characterizations point toward "traditional" computers, this Pattern is equally suitable to model different form factors, purposes and information delivery, ranging from tablets and mobile devices through gaming consoles and wearable IT. The different form factors and other properties of these clients are then represented in the Input and Output functionality, and in Workspace Accommodation if need be.
 * 1) A "fat client": a workspace that delivers its consumers (most or all) computational resources from the location of the human user, resulting in less dependence on the organization's central IT. However, the consumers running on the workspace may well make use of centralized resources such as shared file storage, and the workspace itself may be serviced from a centralized facility, e.g. applications may be deployed from a remote deployment service. The applications running locally, and the human user working the applications, can have all necessary rights and abilities to manage the workspace, or these rights and abilities can be partially or wholly restricted, e.g. by centrally managed policies
 * 2) A "virtual desktop" providing consumers with a centralized personal workspace: the workspace has all the properties of a fat client, except that the computational resources are delivered from one or more centralized locations. At the physical location of the human user, an extra workspace is required for handling the actual physical input and output, using connectivity to the centralized location to transmit the digital input/output. This may involve only a minimal device ("thin client").
 * 3) A "shared applications environment" providing access to a centralized shared workspace: the workspace has the properties of the centralized personal workspace, except that groups of human users share the same workspace, with limited or no personalization, and little or no flexibility in installing applications for the user itself. Every update or new application is handled at the centralized location, resulting in uniform workspaces between users in the same group, and predictable maintenance load for the centralized facility.

While Workspace implementations often use the desktop computer metaphor, OIAm's use of the term is not limited to facilities that can deliver a user the desktop experience. Other devices and systems may also be modelled, as long as either user input and/or output are present. Examples are multifunctional workgroup printers (a single printer directly attached to a single user workspace is better represented as an Output function instance), surveillance camera systems, telemetry platforms, CNC (Computer Numerical Control) systems and most any other system that interacts with the physical world.

The Pattern often depends on many adjacent services, only some of which have been included in this Pattern Type description.