Cloud and Mobility – A Great Symbiosis

Two of the most disruptive changes afoot in the technology landscape today are cloud and mobility. Both of them are omnipresent, all pervasive, and heavily abused. A few special commonalities between the two are noteworthy. Firstly, both are having a significant impact on both the consumer and the enterprise segments. Secondly, they both are increasingly becoming interdependent on the services provided by each other.

 

The confluence of these two steams of technology advancement is creating an ocean of possibilities for the users. These opportunities are being leveraged by businesses worldwide for creating offerings around them, or leveraging them for the furtherance of their respective corporate agendas. This has been made possible by some inter-usable features of cloud and mobility.

 

Cloud is essentially time-share

 

For those of you who went to work in the 80s would remember the time-share machines, which were too expensive (also, too big) to own, and therefore, were leased out for quanta of time. Today, the computers have shrunk in size and cost considerably, with a lot of processing power. However, the workloads have also increased manifold.

 

When it comes to smart devices, it is not possible to store all the data that is required for your usage on the same device. Just think if you needed to store all the pictures and videos you have ever taken on your smartphone. 64 Gigs will start to look very small very soon. But what about the time when you want to show your friends the antics of your 2-year-old daughter? It then becomes imperative to call upon the prowess of the global time-share – The Cloud. You can store your data on the cloud, and access it whenever, wherever you need it.

 

Enterprises use this a lot for the people who need to be out in the field, where the action is. There is not enough bandwidth in the world to store local copies of corporate data on each individual device (if you can fit it there), and keep each and every one of them synced real-time. That’s where the Ether is the perfect choice.

 

Wireless networks are faster than ever

 

We have 3 options when deploying applications and data – we do it locally, or over a computer network (which is still local to the network), or we do it in the Ether (C-word). Earlier, the third mechanism was not preferred because of accessibility issues caused by slow networks and inadequate bandwidth. Today, with the evolution of 4G LTE, the wireless networks are far faster and reliable than the broadband from 2 years ago. This solves the connectivity conundrum, allowing the users to enjoy the benefits of using the benefits of the cloud on their mobile devices.

 

Communication and collaboration

 

The most important currency in today’s world is information. Organizations are fixated on the information that is generated, manipulated, stored and used by the users (both customers and employees) on a day-to-day basis. Enterprise unified communication and collaboration (UCC) platforms integrate different sources of this information into a single, cross-leveraged unit. However, when we talk about mobile UCC, there are many interoperability challenges. Some of these challenges have been addressed in the PaaS and SaaS world where the APIs, connectors and native integrations are readily available.

 

The evolution of mobility and cloud certainly present many possibilities for new services and improvement of existing offerings. If used wisely, they can lead to a solid topline and bottomline impact.

Demystifying the Cloud

It is hard these days to pick up a technology magazine or to read an IT blog without coming across reference to “the cloud”. From novices to pundits, everyone is talking about the cloud. The problem is not everyone agrees on what cloud is, or what its impact is on the modern IT landscape.

 

Blind Man’s Elephant?

 

Cloud computing today can be best described as a blind man’s elephant. The perception, understanding and reality of Cloud depend on who is selling it, and who is buying it.

 

This confused state of affairs is further aggravated by the vendors in the IT marketplace. Today, everyone from a hardware vendor to a software product company to a services organization call what they sell "Cloud".

 

The customers are not far behind in escalating the situation. Driven by the pressure from the business to invest in cloud, IT organizations have taken to calling their existing execution models as Cloud.

 

Due to all this focus on wordplay, everything from managed services to hardware lease models, to virtualized infrastructure, to innovative sourcing / financial models today are referred to as "Cloud".

 

A Part vs the Whole

 

Almost every time a customer talks about needing a "Cloud" model, they are referring to a 'feature' that cloud provides, and which can generally be easily achieved within their existing landscape.

 

For e.g., when a customer says that he wants cloud to take the assets off his books, he is looking for an OPEX vs. a CAPEX. This can be done through asset leasing / IaaS providers. Similarly, when customers ask for speed of provisioning / asset reclaim, the same can easily be achieved through higher virtualization and some automation tools.

 

True, cloud provides features like scalability, self-service, elasticity, utility / usage based pricing, agility, better resource utilization, code movement and metering among many others, but any one (or more) of these features in a solution do not a cloud make. High degree of virtualization is NOT cloud. Paying for a server over a period of time instead of upfront is NOT cloud. Hosted, managed services is NOT cloud. Pay-per-use is NOT cloud. And simply attaching ‘as a service(aaS)’ behind a traditional service is most certainly NOT cloud.

 

Defining Cloud

 

In simple English, cloud refers to technology delivery framework where the collective capacity of multiple IT components like Servers, Storage, Network devices etc. is made available to the user(s) on a per unit usage basis over the internet.

 

A true "Cloud" model is architecturally different from traditional IT landscape, and often has its own development and management platforms. There are primarily 3 flavors of cloud available today, and they can be viewed in a simple hierarchical model of Infrastructure, OS + Development platform and Application:

 

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): OS down capacity provided in utility model

Platform as a service (PaaS): Dev platform down capacity provided in utility model

Software as a service (SaaS): Application down capacity provided in utility model

 

These 3 flavors can be deployed either in a large, sophisticated datacenter owned by a single organization, and shared among multiple customers, or in the datacenter of an enterprise and used by only the people in the same organization. The first model is known as a Public Cloud while the second is known as a Private Cloud.

 

Final Word:

 

It is important to understand that the cloud computing industry represents a large ecosystem of many models, vendors, and market niches. This definition attempts to encompass all of the various cloud approaches. Further, Cloud computing is still an evolving paradigm. Its definitions use cases, underlying technologies, issues, risks, and benefits will be refined in a spirited debate by the public and private sectors. These definitions, attributes, and characteristics will evolve and change over time.

 

Copper Mobile is a mobile application development firm, with headquarters in Dallas, Texas. The company has made its niche as one of top iPhone app developers in Dallas and mobile application companies in Noida

 

 

Cloud Storage Services to Touch 500M Users by Year End

The number of internet users accessing both free & paid cloud storage services has shot up to 375 million according to the current figures. If the estimate brought out by market intelligence research firm iHS iSuppli is to be believed, this figure will rise up to 500 million by the end of 2012. Thereport in TechCrunch cites the statement made by consumer & communications director of iHS iSuppli Mr. Jagdish Rebello, who is of the opinion that cloud services have come as a “game changer” in the world of mobile marketing. It offers benefits to not only users but also the service providers.

 

The estimate brought out by iHS iSuppli clearly proves that cloud services rose to popularity in the year 2011 when more than 150 million users of the internet made subscriptions. Though the firm admits that a specific count cannot be stated for the number of users of cloud storage services in the year 2011 due to the newness of the concept, there is certainly evidence to prove that cloud storage service customers will surpass the 500 million & 625 million mark in years 2012 & 2013 respectively.

 

This report posted just yesterday is indicative of the fact that though the number of cloud storage service users is increasing by the day, the cost involved in providing these services is by no way reducing. Both technology giants like Apple, Microsoft, & Google and startup units like SugarSync, Dropbox, & Mozy will incur huge costs in providing these services to internet users. While the giants have accepted the loss as a start in the process of popularizing the concept of cloud storage services, the startup units have decided to offer free storage space as part of the cloud services in order to attract more customers, thereby increasing the user base. As part of reduction of costs in providing cloud storage services, all companies are now partnering with mobile network operators, says the reporting team of iHS iSuppli.

 

While the future looks bright for cloud storage services, it is also true that independent providers of the service will face severe difficulties to maintain financial viability. It is yet to be seen how well the increasing number of cloud storage service users are catered to.