Monday, February 6, 2012

What Mobile Cloud Computing can do for your business

May 20, 2010 by  
Filed under Business Strategy

Cloud computing comes about when services and data are kept on the web instead on individual devices, providing on-demand access. Resources are provided and managed by the service provider. Programs are run at a remote location and then sent to the user. Although cloud style computing has seen widespread use in PC and Mac development, its use is limited in mobile application development. However, analysts guess that there will be over 20 times more mobile cloud based applications in 2014 than there were in 2009. In this article, we’ll examine how mobile applications will be affected by this change.

Mobile cloud computing offers several benefits for mobile device users. Business users can share resources and applications without a high level of capital expenditure on hardware and software resources. Because of the way these programs are created, users do not need to have highly technical hardware to use applications since complex computing operations will be powered by the cloud. This lessens the price of mobile computing for the client. End users will see a plethora of unique features enhancing their phones because of mobile cloud computing. A few examples of these applications can be seen to emerge such as programs that give users the ability to watch home security devices and others which allow users to create location based social networks.

Developers also greatly benefit from this new technology. The largest advantage to cloud computing for developers is that it allows them to reach a bigger market. As cloud computing programs run through a browser, the end user’s mobile operating system has no impact on the program, which means that any program will be useable with any app that uses a suitable browser. Because of the advanced improvement in mobile browsers influenced by Apple and Google over the previous few years, almost every mobile should have a suitable browser. This means developers will have a much wider market, means they can bypass the restrictions created by by mobile operating systems.

Along with a larger market, cloud computing gives developers the opportunity to make programs at a lower cost, and hold a larger amount of the profits. Since programmers only have to create one build of the application and still have access to every device user, their building costs will be reduced when compared with if they needed to develop for every mobile platform individually. Developing cloud programs also lets developers to get passed application stores such as the Apple App Store. This will ensure that they do not have to shell out a portion of their earnings to the mobile platform owner.

Mobile cloud programmers provides new business opportunities for device network providers. Many providers such as Orange, Vodafone and Verizon have started to sell cloud computing systems for businesses. These services give the chance for businesses to outsource the IT infrastructure, forgoing large capital investments using high end hardware. These cloud services help businesses to pay resource costs like data storage or application hosting. The network providers demand subscription fees for such services. Network operators also give security services for these networks, and that shows another unique opportunity available by cloud computing

A real challenge faced by cloud computing is the availability of networks and intermittency. A cloud program needs a constant connection which could prove to be the Achilles heel for this new technology. But as mobile network technology continue to improve, chances are high that fixes to this particular problem might reveal themselves. New programming languages like HTML 5 already provide a solution by enabling data caching through a mobile device, and this allows a cloud application to continue to work until the connection is restored.

The refining of this new technology seems to be a new big step in mobile application development. Mobile cloud computing gives benefits for each agent within the mobile devices or applications sector. It expands the market, lessen the cost of programs, reduce hardware requirements and provides new chances for network operators. When mobile web capabilities reaches levels of reliability to PCs and Macs, cloud computing will probably become a very popular method in developing, distributing and using mobile applications.

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