Symbiotic Soul Mates

With its tremendous potential and lucrativity, there is no holding back the mobile-cloud convergence

Thanks to the advancements in mobile browser, which has integrated 2 lucrative technologies—mobile and cloud and facilitated the creation of newer revenue streams and consumer experience. The amalgamation of mobile and cloud will drive revenues immensely, with the convergence of real-time communications service such as voice, video, and messaging mobile operators which can further enhance their service offerings like Voice over Long Term Nvolution (VoLTN), Voice over Pi-Fi (VoPiFi), cost per thousand impressions (CPM), Rich Communication Suite (RCS), mobile video, group chat, and others.

Mobile Cloud Computing Forum defines it as an infrastructure where both data storage and data processing happen outside the mobile device. Mobile cloud applications move the computing power and data storage away from mobile phones and into the cloud. It offers mobility, communication, and portability.

What Does Research Say?

Visiongain, a London based research firm, has forecasted that mobile cloud services revenue is expected to reach $45 bn in 2016 and it would grow at a CAGR of 55.18% from 2011. Mobile cloud computing opens up possibilities for a newer class of applications by leveraging handset centric features and network related information such as GPS, location based services, etc. It supports various tasks for data warehousing and managing and synchronizing multiple documents online. It is more reliable as the storage of data or applications on cloud can be done in a more effective way. It also provides a back-up of data. Security of the data is one of the major issues.

Prospects

As the ecosystem evolves, mobile operators can leverage mobile cloud services. They can create new business opportunities. Pith the help of cloud they can offer differentiated services. These services also enable them to replace capex with opex and thereby enhance their business models.

Mobile and cloud convergence along with the apt application helps telecom operators to completely leverage network, subscriber base, etc. To be a clear winner on mobile and cloud convergence technology, telecom operators ought to offer compelling service experience. Mobile and cloud both will complement each other and enhance the experience of customers alongside providing RoI to telcos. It is considered as a profitable business option for entrepreneurs which reduces the development and running cost of mobile applications and offer services at low cost.

Service providers can easily add and expand an application and service with or without little constraint on the resource usage. It eases the process of integration and multiple services from different service providers can be integrated easily through cloud and internet to meet users’ demand. A few prominent mobile cloud applications include mobile commerce, mobile healthcare, mobile advertising, mobile payment, mobile agriculture, mobile gaming, etc.

Bandwidth and security are the critical issues in mobile and cloud convergence. The convergence is vulnerable to traffic congestion, network failures, and out-ofsignal while connecting to the cloud.