Connect-World Magazine - Connect-World Europe I (2016)

In this issue

The ties between mobile devices and the cloud grow stronger by the minute. The combination of these technologies is accelerating the growth of ‘liquid computing’ - the software driven ability to seamlessly move from one type of device to another to access, use, process, and change data.
With its head in the cloud, mobile can access - and process - data and applications that until recently were confined to the largest computers. Smartphones and tablets will offer individuals and corporations alike easy, on the spot access not only to emails, social media and the Web, but to high-powered mobile computing, extraordinary virtual and augmented reality, big data and immediate access to analytics such as cognitive computing and machine learning.
Marshalling the resources to offer virtually unlimited access to storage and on demand processing will significantly reduce the infrastructure costs and time to market for untold numbers of applications. Cloud models, on the other hand will become increasingly more complex, powerful and subject to cyber-crime attempts.
The advantages of scale and cost - available in a wide variety of devices - will almost certainly drive the market for mobile /cloud well into the trillion-dollar range within the decade. The mobile market is currently bigger than that for the cloud, but corporate usage and the growth of applications - the Internet of Things, for example - might soon balance the scales between the cloud/mobile and consumer/corporate markets.