Mobile Devices and the Cloud

August 3, 2010
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WRITTEN BY
August 3, 2010

James Taylor

What is the mobile cloud?
  Cloud com­put­ing is on-demand com­put­ing that does not reside on the users’ premise.  Instead, the shared com­put­ing resources are owned and man­aged by a ser­vice provider and the users access the resources via the Inter­net.  The major­i­ty of the pro­cess­ing for the appli­ca­tion takes place in the cloud (Shared Ser­vice), with some pro­cess­ing tak­ing place on the mobile device.  The mobile cloud will lever­age the same cloud infra­struc­ture as stan­dard desk­tops and oth­er devices, such as gaming.
What does the mobile cloud mean to users?  
To the aver­age user, a cloud ser­vice or appli­ca­tion will look, feel, and act like it is run­ning local­ly on the mobile device.  Cloud ser­vices such as Apple’s iTunes and Google’s Gmail are already in pro­duc­tion.  How­ev­er, the heavy lift­ing or major pro­cess­ing and stor­age for the appli­ca­tions hap­pen on serv­er com­put­ing farms that make up the cloud, and not on the mobile device.  This makes the appli­ca­tions that run on a mobile device extreme­ly light­weight, but also more reliant upon the con­nec­tiv­i­ty to the cloud infrastructure.
Huge growth is expect­ed for the mobile cloud com­put­ing indus­try.  Based on the lat­est study from Juniper Research,the mar­ket for cloud-based mobile appli­ca­tions is pro­ject­ed to grow at 88% year over year from 2009 to 2014.  This growth projects the mobile cloud mar­ket could top $9.5 bil­lion by 2014, and com­pares to the esti­mat­ed $400 mil­lion in 2009.  ABI Research has high­er pro­jec­tions with the mobile cloud exceed­ing $20 bil­lion over the next five years.  ABI Research senior ana­lyst Mark Bec­cue says, “device frag­men­ta­tion and mem­o­ry cur­rent­ly lim­it the lev­el of sophis­ti­ca­tion devel­op­ers can deliv­er through mobile apps. By con­trast, run­ning mobile appli­ca­tions in the cloud will free up mobile proces­sors while also enabling devel­op­ers to cre­ate just one ver­sion of their application.”
The lead­ing mobile device or soft­ware pro­duc­ers (Microsoft, Apple, and Google) under­stand the long term val­ue of the cloud.  They are all at var­i­ous stages of a cloud build-out, and all cur­rent­ly have some lev­el of cloud capa­bil­i­ties in their offerings.
  • Apple
    – iTunes and iPhone/iPad appli­ca­tions have been Apple’s pre­mier cloud based ser­vices.  At the recent Mac­world con­fer­ence, Apple unveiled plans to allow users to cre­ate, edit, and store doc­u­ments in the cloud.  This increas­es the access to doc­u­ments stored in the cloud from both the desk­top and mobile devices.
  • Google
    – A few well known cloud appli­ca­tions are already avail­able, includ­ing Google Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Voice for the iPhone.  Cur­rent­ly, Google owns the cloud advan­tage with regards to con­sumer and small busi­ness appli­ca­tions.  The chal­lenges for Google are mobile devices in the enter­prise, and  enter­tain­ment con­tent (music, video and gam­ing).  Apple has a huge advan­tage with iTunes, and Google will try to play catch-up by launch­ing a ser­vice lat­er this year.  Microsoft and Black­ber­ry are still the lead­ers in mobile in the enterprise.
  • Microsoft 
    – A recent Steve Ballmer com­ment regard­ing the cloud says it all, “We are all in!”  Microsoft’s goal is to make the infor­ma­tion users wants avail­able across all screens, PC, mobile, TV, and gam­ing.  They can accom­plish this with the cloud.  Microsoft also has a tools advan­tage.  With their roots in cre­at­ing devel­op­ment lan­guages and tools, Microsoft is cre­at­ing a devel­op­ment plat­form that allows the devel­op­er to cre­ate mul­ti-screen cloud-based appli­ca­tions from one devel­op­ment tool.   No oth­er com­pa­ny has a tool set that offers this capability. 
In a recent pre­sen­ta­tion, Eric Schmidt from Google uses a very appro­pri­ate quote from C. Clarke, “Any suf­fi­cient­ly advanced tech­nol­o­gy is indis­tin­guish­able from mag­ic.”Schmidt says that today’s mobile plat­forms are so pow­er­ful that when com­bined with a robust cloud ser­vice they can do “mag­i­cal things.”  The mag­ic is already start­ing to hap­pen.  Patients are cur­rent­ly being mon­i­tored for doc­tors by their phones, mobile phones are allow­ing gulf oil spill vic­tims to use loca­tion ser­vices to pin­point oil slicks and sick marine life for imme­di­ate atten­tion, and Chase just released an appli­ca­tion where you can deposit a check by tak­ing pic­tures with your Smart­phone.  Magic!
Mobile devices com­bined with appli­ca­tions and ser­vices run­ning in the cloud will become a dis­rup­tive force in both the tech­nol­o­gy world, and the world at large.  World­wide, there are over 2.5 bil­lion mobile devices, and less than 20% are of the Smart­phone cal­iber.  If cloud-based appli­ca­tions and ser­vices could be made avail­able to the oth­er 80% of mobile users, the results will be disruptive. 
The cap­i­tal shift in areas such as e‑commerce and adver­tis­ing will trans­form and cre­ate new mar­kets.  This will be espe­cial­ly true in less devel­oped coun­tries.  The rate at which less devel­oped coun­tries use mobile ser­vices is high­er than any oth­er group, even though the phones con­tain few­er capa­bil­i­ties.  Many feel this is the bridge for those that can’t afford a per­son­al com­put­er.  A mobile phone is a com­mu­ni­ca­tions device that is much less expen­sive than a com­put­er, and allows access to infor­ma­tion and ser­vices that were pre­vi­ous­ly unavail­able.  This is chang­ing lives at a very basic level.
The main­frame com­put­er was a dis­rup­tive force, the per­son­al com­put­er was a dis­rup­tive force, and the mobile phone with cloud com­put­ing will be a dis­rup­tive force.  How will you or your busi­ness take advan­tage of this shift?
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