Mobile Cloud Services Ready to Take Flight

Two of the IT industrys hottest markets, mobility and cloud computing, are poised to coalesce. Juniper Research projects that the worldwide mobile cloud services market will reach $9.5 billion, in part because of the adoption of new mobile application development standards.Mobile Cloud Applications & Services: Monetising Enterprise & Consumer Markets 2009-2014 illustrated the growing interest that small and medium businesses have in development of mobile cloud applications. These businesses often find cloud computing attractive because it enables them offload cumbersome application and system maintenance requirements. However, one challenge has been finding tools to develop mobile cloud applications. The recent emergence of new standards, such as HTML5 and the Open Mobile Alliances Smart Card Web Server (SCWS), has simplified that process and is expected to help spur adoption of these applications.

The cellular carriers do face some challenges in promoting their services, with network capacity being one possible obstacle. Their networks are constrained by the amount of information that can be funneled into wireless connections. While carriers are trying to boost network capacity through deployment of Long Term Evolution and WiMAX systems, it is unclear if such developments will be able to keep pace with a rapid uptick in mobile data usage.

Also, security is a major concern for businesses. High profile outages from vendors, such as Google and Rackspace, have illustrated the problems that can arise when another vendor is responsible for a companys IT infrastructure. Suppliers will need to do a better job guarding against network outages to persuade more companies to take advantage of their services.

Increasingly, small and medium businesses are relying on mobile devices to complete their work, however, maintaining these systems has been difficult. The emergence of new cloud based mobile services promises to make that process simpler and is expected to be embraced by small and medium businesses.