Leverage the cloud to strengthen your mobile strategy

Mobile devices will facilitate the development of cloud computing and vice versa. Because of the security and management aspects of mobile applications, it is wise to use a private cloud. But IT departments need to plan and invest to succeed.

Some companies are already turning in this direction. A survey of 3,645 it decision makers in eight countries in December 2011 showed that one-third of respondents said that being able to provide information access to multiple devices was the primary reason for their deployment of cloud computing. The survey, conducted by TNS, a market research firm, funded by service provider CSC, shows that cutting costs is the third most important reason to deploy cloud computing, with 17% of respondents choosing this option.

Why deploy cloud computing?

The main factors are:

Want to be able to access information using a variety of devices--33%

Improve business speed--21%

Cut costs--17%

Source: TNS/CSC observation, in December 2011, 3,645 respondents were surveyed.

Richard Peltz, vice president and chief information Officer of Marcus & Millichap, a commercial real estate investment services company, is purchasing a content management system (CMS) developed by Sitecore. This VMware software based system will be deployed on the private cloud of the Marcus & Millichap company.

"One of the great features is that we are able to deliver automatically generated content to all mobile devices and no longer need to write applications for specific devices such as iphones or Android devices," Peltz explains. After the CMS was fully deployed, he said: "The system allows end users, departments, or business units to manage all of our content." ”

By consolidating CMS access for mobile devices into the company's private cloud, Marcus & Millichap is actually creating a mobile cloud.

The senior vice president and chief information Officer of the Il Insurance Group, Eric Miller, said that in all of the company's applications, they first considered mobility, and ported them to PCs when and where they might be needed.

"What you're doing is a balancing game, which is what you need to support," he said. "Erie uses web analytics to track which devices are accessing the company's Web site. "First, we have to figure out the types of mobile devices that are ranked first, second and third," he said. Then we will create applications that are well adapted to these devices. ”

The problem his company needs to solve is to create a portal site that adapts itself to the devices that visit the site, or to create a device-specific application. The company is currently using both solutions. Customers using the iphone can use a mobile application called "First Notice of Loss" in the itunes Store to submit a photo or loss of a vehicle accident. This information will be uploaded to the back-end server of the Il Insurance Group.

In addition, the company has a portal site. "We can do exactly the same thing on the portal site," Miller said. "The portal was created to" allow any mobile device to submit information such as photos or loss of vehicle accidents. ”

Bernard Golden, chief executive of Hyperstratus, a consultancy, said the companies were just the representatives of the mobile cloud trend. Compared with traditional end-user computing environments, future mobile computing devices will have less built-in storage capacity, and with the increasing number and variety of mobile computing devices, many future applications will move to a centralized environment, such as the cloud. This allows storage, computing, data access, security, and management to be addressed in a centralized manner.

From 2009 to 2014, the cloud-based mobile applications market is expected to grow by about 90%, according to Juniper Research, a market study firm. By 2015, more than 240 million of business customers will be accessing cloud computing services via mobile devices, a figure that could reach 1 billion in the future, says ABI Research, a market-study firm.

In fact, some people believe that if the number and type of mobile devices are growing rapidly in large enterprises, the surest way to manage them is through some sort of centralized approach. To be a real mobile enterprise cannot be achieved simply by enlarging its size.

Mobile computing does not equate to mobile cloud computing

Although mobile computing and mobile cloud computing are only one word bad, they mean a whole different thing. In "normal" mobile computing, applications are run in native mode on mobile devices, and applications and data are stored on devices.

The application with native mode has some advantages, but the most important is no delay and network bandwidth problem. However, applications running on mobile devices are often limited in functionality and are often not commercial-level applications. For example, a native-mode smartphone application is rarely used as a front-end for database queries.

Instead, mobile cloud applications run on servers that are located on the cloud. The application data is also stored on the cloud, and results are fed back to the mobile device via a 3G or 4G wireless network. The user accesses the application or data through the browser of the mobile device in hand.

Mobile cloud computing has the ability to allow users to run more high-performance applications, making security more appropriate. However, there are also some problems with mobile cloud computing, such as latency and network bandwidth problems when transferring data between the cloud and mobile devices.

Even if the cloud makes it easier for end users to access mobile applications, IT organizations and developers must address a number of serious problems so that the corporate private cloud can properly accommodate mobile computing. "Identity management must be extended to mobile devices," says Golden. You also have to be able to control the data that is stored in the device or device that you decide to replace or lose.

In addition, he explains, applications must be properly built so that applications running on mobile devices can access back-end company software and data stored on the cloud. Golden said: "Application developers must also understand that mobile device bandwidth may be low, the device may be disconnected." ”

Kamesh Pemmaraju, a sand dune group analyst, said mobile devices would accelerate the company's cloud deployment. "On the corporate side, more and more employees are starting to use mobile devices to read e-mail messages, access schedules, and Access databases in read-only mode," he said. ”

"Cloud computing and mobile computing are parallel developments, because from client to server, they involve moving ' things '-applications and/or data in some way," said Tony Iams, senior vice president and senior analyst at Ideas Technologies. This has made a connection between the two. ”

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)