We are focused on the Mobile Cloud. We have published a comprehensive study of “The Future of the Mobile Cloud” over the past year, encompassing: implementation issues; applications and services; market sizing by segment; and impact on industry structure and critical company strategies.

The future of information technology in the next five-to-ten years will be dominated by two factors – cloud computing and mobile.

While many have not yet recognized the existence, much less the importance of the mobile cloud, Cisco, for one, has clearly recognized the existence of the mobile cloud – what it describes as “when two of the hottest topics in the world of technology—‘mobility’ and ‘cloud’—collide.”

Cisco defines mobile cloud as:

mobile services and apps delivered from a centralized (and perhaps virtualized) data center to a mobile device such as a smartphone.

We have concluded that the Mobile Cloud will actually subsume Cloud Computing.

The Mobile Cloud is not simply an extension of the CLOUD that has emerged in the past five years. Rather the Mobile Cloud takes Cloud development to a completely new level.

There is a confluence of developments driving the spread of the mobile cloud: the proliferation of mobile devices; the continual enhancement of their capabilities; the enhancement of mobile networks; the coming Deluge of mobile traffic; the explosion of mobile apps; the growing “interdependence” of apps; the declining cost curves of devices; and several others.

This mobile milieu or ecosystem, whatever we choose to call it, relies on computing and communications resources, which will, by the very nature of mobile devices, have to be distributed to optimize their availability and efficiency.

 While THE CLOUD is a meaningful advance for fixed computing, the Mobile Cloud is much more than just an advance in terms of the progress of Mobile. The Mobile Cloud is an absolutely critical and dominant factor in the future of the mobile industry.

It is understandable that many people have the perception that there is THE CLOUD and mobile is simply one was of accessing it. This is understandable, since the cloud developed initially from the background of largely enterprise considerations – the desire to reduce corporate data center costs and overall corporate IT expense.

However, the world is in the process of being overwhelmed by the growth of:

• Mobile devices
• Mobile Internet and data
• Mobile apps

Since mobile is going to overwhelm fixed computing and communications, it follows that the Mobile Cloud will subsume the fixed cloud.

What this means is:

a) Applications will have to be developed to work efficiently on mobile devices – it is a shortcut to oblivion for developers to develop apps and services without recognizing that they will be used primarily on mobile devices;

b) Mobile networks will have to be optimized to deal with billions of users tapping into cloud resources;

c) All market leaders in ICT (information and communication technologies) will require a successful, mass market, mobile cloud strategy;

d) Computing assets will no longer be the domain of the enterprise and government. Large scale computing will become the domain of every business and we are heading to the world of large scale computing being the domain of the individual as well.

The enormity of these potential developments was recognized in part by the following statement from SAP:

The pervasiveness of the cloud and mobile devices, together with the power of in-memory computing, allow people to connect and collaborate wherever and whenever they choose. At the same time, they can access and analyze large amounts of data in seconds. We strongly believe that the convergence of these technologies has the potential to create enormous business value and power new business models both in developed countries and emerging markets. We further believe this will change cultures — both within companies and externally among their customers, partners, and others across their business ecosystems.

Let us know how you feel on this issue.

Also let us know if you agree or disagree with this statement:

If there had been no development of Cloud Computing in the last few years, it would have been necessary to invent the Cloud – just for Mobile