Attendees at mobile cloud event challenge idea that opportunities are available for the taking The difficulty of making a profit, coupled with various integration and compliance issues, might be the tip of an iceberg that could sink mobile cloud adoptions for the foreseeable future. That is the view of some attendees at a recent press event in Surrey, which showcased research suggesting serious opportunities in the mobile cloud space.

 John Earley, strategic development director at pay-as-you-go broadband provider Metronet, said that, as a small telco with many SMB customers, he has found that mobile technology could be held back because some people are worried about its adoption threatening their jobs.

He said there are also ongoing concerns about cloud technology in general. "There are risks in the cloud, and they [businesses] are only embracing a bit of it. The majority are only putting some services in the cloud," added Earley.

Chris Adlard, head of EMEA marketing at source code development software vendor Coverity, warned that mobile app software development practices for the cloud might not be up to the task yet. In his view, a new software development testing process is needed to produce apps that will truly satisfy the customer.

"The software innovation has got extremely complex, and the quality of what is done to code apps and systems hasn't kept up. There needs to be a new kind of testing development process in the software development life cycle," said Adlard.

John Lunt, managing director at software asset management (SAM) vendor Certero, agreed there are many ongoing issues in mobile cloud, or in hosted applications and services in general. Compliance, application integration, and the general diversity and chaos of the mobile cloud space all need consideration. For customers, the potential benefits may not outweigh the likely cost.

For mobile cloud service or app providers in the channel, the biggest question is how to make money out of it, he noted. This is also because services can cost the provider much more to deliver than pieces of kit.

"How do you protect your assets? How do you manage it? How do you licence it?" said Lunt. "I am not sure that the cloud will really take off. There is the social media and communications: that's all good. But there are challenges with the subscription model. Will companies start to go bust?"

Expansive growth?

However, the event presented research from Quadriga Consulting suggesting that the industry could be on the cusp of expansive growth in mobile cloud. John Peel, analyst and managing director of Quadriga Consulting, presented the research.

"Smart, connected mobile platforms are transformative, and are verging on ubiquitous," said Peel. "They are penetrating every corner of the globe, transforming perceptions of computing and user expectations."

He also pointed at consumerisation in the enterprise space as another factor helping the trend. Some countries in Africa and parts of Asia, meanwhile, are leapfrogging on-premise offerings in favour of mobile due to poorer infrastructure. In these nations, World Bank research has shown a 10 per cent rise in mobile device penetration correlating with a 1.2 per cent increase in GDP.

Smartphone and tablet adoption globally has reached a point where downloads of apps and services such as iTunes music are growing exponentially. This suggests, according to Peel, that businesses and their IT provider partners should get on board.

Oxford Economics Digital Megatrends research – with which Peel is also involved – suggests that about 57 per cent of C-level execs may be considering investing in mobile tech over the next five years. This places mobile tech ahead of business intelligence (39 per cent) and even cloud computing in general (37 per cent).

"Consumer behaviour is changing rapidly," said Peel. "It is about highly socialised content and interaction, with consumption taking place in context, in near real time. And mobile payment enablement is coming very, very soon."

However, Peel conceded there are risks in adopting mobile tech. The same Digital Megatrends survey, which polled 363 C-suite executives in eight nations, found that 60 per cent are concerned about the security of information stored or transferred over mobile devices or apps, 44 per cent are worried about the consistency of connectivity, and about 44.5 per cent want resolution of issues in the speed of information transfer, reliability and the like.

Click here to read the full article