Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We’ve gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.
As diverse mobile devices continue to invade the workplace and employees demand more sophisticated mobile applications to get their work done, enterprises are increasingly combining mobile applications and cloud computing to make business life easier. Workers are using a growing combination of cloud storage solutions to store, retrieve and consume content while on the go.
Mobile cloud subscribers should continue to be a driving force in mobile enterprise growth and market research firms predict up to 75% of the mobile cloud-based application market will be represented by enterprise users.
As the mobile cloud gains momentum, communications service providers looking for a stake in this lucrative market will have to battle some of the Web giants that pioneered cloud computing services.
Well-known early pioneers in cloud-based storage have gained a foothold in the enterprise market with services that allow users to upload and access files in the cloud on personal devices and conduct synching and collaboration activities.
Yet there remains ample room for communications companies to take advantage of the new opportunities. As consumers and enterprise users flock to personal clouds, wireless operators and carriers can participate by developing their own carrier-based versions to provide safe storage for consumer’s personal data, which is being generated and stored at an increasing scale. With most subscribers’ using more than one brand of device, having access to data and other media beyond the limits of device makers’ personal cloud “silos” is paramount. Wireless operators are uniquely positioned to provide such services.
Mobile cloud computing, however, is also creating many challenges. Realizing they cannot build everything themselves, operators are asking for support in areas such as integration in the cloud. There is an array of cloud adoption challenges that are relatively predictable, but others may come as a surprise to many communications service providers. For example, in many companies software-as-a-service adoption may already be prevalent but without proper governance; various departments may have bypassed IT and adopted multiple SaaS applications. Some large organizations see SaaS as an option for almost everything in the enterprise. Just keeping track of what services the organization has committed to is the first problem.
Another challenge is the fact that the company’s data now resides in the servers of SaaS firms that are unfamiliar or sometimes completely unknown to the company. Security, storage and system architectures can be other key considerations. Managing data across both traditional IT and cloud services could be issues for IT.
Cloud is a pervasive technology that is finding its way into a variety of applications. One high-tech firm that markets commercial support and related services for open source, and has created a popular open source Linux desktop environment, wanted to integrate its open source desktop environment into Android smartphones, providing a unique user experience by transforming the phone into a desktop PC, once docked with an external large screen and keyboard. This provided a low-cost alternative to desktop PCs, targeted at emerging markets and cloud-based managed desktop solutions. In another example of the pervasiveness of cloud, NTT DoCoMo, a Japanese mobile operator serving over 59 million customers, wanted to establish and operate a remote test center at the University of Aizu in Fukushima and allow testing of multiple devices across multiple smartphone OS versions simultaneously on a cloud-based system.
The mobile cloud train is moving fast and wireless operators and carriers need to make sure they find a way to get onboard before it’s too late. Clearly, the telecommunications industry still has some important advantages, especially through existing and often long-standing customer relationships, billing expertise and customer services. As with all previous technology waves, cloud brings innovation and new ways to create business value, such as creating services that weren’t possible before. For example, through existing customer relationships, CSPs can offer various bundles of cloud and telecom and/or network services, increasing the odds that customers will retain and expand their business with their telecom service provider. By being mindful of the potential cloud challenges CSPs can implement an agile cloud infrastructure that deliver key telecommunication services to mobile users.
Monte Hong is managing director – Global Communications Industry and Asia Pacific Communications Industry lead, Accenture; Jack Sepple is global senior managing director – Cloud, Accenture.
