"Cloud is like traveling to the Moon, Mobile Cloud with Big Data is like traveling to Mars" - Ajay Budhraja

I worked extensively in the telecommunications area to lead large nationwide mobile application and portal rollouts that included mobile platforms, applications, services and integration mechanisms. With the proliferation of smart phone and tablets, mobile devices are accessing new and innovative applications everyday and the amount of data and processing requirements have exploded. Millions of devices are being added each year. Plug in a Cloud into this situation and you can reap its benefits of on demand access and scalability. Software as a Service applications are the most common ones that are being made ready for mobile devices. Vendors are now cloud enabling their applications not just for traditional access but also for mobile access since with 4G services, there is lower latency and better data storage capacity.

Mobile devices themselves have limitations in terms of processing. Cloud computing can handle the power and storage aspects that do not need to be handled by mobile devices. In addition, data can be obtained from many data sources and services should be able to handle all this information. Cloud vendors are also providing enhanced api's (application programming interfaces) that can be leveraged not just for traditional applications but also for mobile applications.  These solutions offer integrated development environments for Androids, iPhones and other devices and the Cloud based applications can be spun up very quickly. On the back end, issues related Big Data need to be addressed since Big Data requires adequate storage and distributed processing. Big Data also injects heterogeneous data types that need proper integration into the existing infrastructure. Social networks have been generating tremendous amounts of such data and the mobile cloud has to effectively handle and process such data. A well laid out architecture for the mobile Cloud can handle such data and data compression techniques are very useful from a storage standpoint.

Developing mobile applications for various devices with different operating systems, screen sizes etc can be challenging. In the past developers were doing so for specific devices, however with the mobile Cloud this can be done through the browsers on the devices. Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms (MEAPs) facilitate the development of mobile applications by making sure the data can be rendered on the device screen through data conversion. With HTML 5, HTML, CSS and Javascipt can be leveraged for browsers on many devices. In the past native application development was being done where developers could code for a particular device using the application programming interfaces for that device. There are also applications out there that are using both native and HTML capabilties to render applications for multiple devices. In such situations the HTML, CSS and Javascipt can be used across multiple devices.

The first step is to develop a sound mobile strategy and to get buy in from key stakeholders. From a strategic perspective applications should be portable, mobile cloud functions to support these applications should be specified and the logistics of content delivery should be defined. A determination has to be made if such applications will be procured or built in house. Interoperability, portability and security are all very important for mobile applications and need to be addressed as part of the strategy.

(This has been extracted from and is reference to Ajay Budhraja's blog)

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