FREE MOBILE CLOUD COMPUTING CONCEPTS - TRAINING_MODULES_WITH_TONS_OF_VIDEOS
The ecosystem is
rapidly evolving and Mobile Cloud Services offers the opportunity for mobile operators to help cloud-based 3rd
party OTT providers to ensure quality of user experience. Mobile operators can then create new business opportunities with
their very own cloud that offers differentiated services while replacing Capex with Opex greatly enhances the business model.
In its new report, Visiongain believes that mobile cloud
service revenues will reach $45 billion in 2016 at a CARG of 55.18% from 2011. The greatest mobile cloud revenue contributions
will come from mobile cloud applications. This is primarily due to increasing Smartphone penetration, growth of 3G network
coverage across the globe and deployment of LTE services.
With companies like Mavenir that have enabled Mobile Cloud
Services since 2010, mobile operators can offer move real-time communications services (voice, video and messaging) to the
cloud. Mavenir’s converged voice, video and messaging solutions enable services like VoLTE, VoWiFi, CPM, RCS, Mobile
Video, Group Chat and others.
Operators can monetize these new mobile services that are
scalable, highly customizable, easy to implement and competitive by offering new real-time communications services and leveraging
their huge key advantage of ownership of the network, subscriber, mobile number and billing relationship.
BaaS
mobile-cloud
Mobile Video Calling – the extension of voice and
messaging
Mobile Video calling and video conferencing is a natural extension of voice and messaging for consumers.
Mobile operators are showing
interest in launching video services as it extends their value proposition as well.
The OTT players have brought innovation and a newly defined
service experience to mobile video calling that has attracted consumers to use these new services. But the game is just starting…
Operators control delivery
and leveraging the interest that OTT players have generated, Operators can now capture that consumer base with a ‘better
product’.
Why
are services like mobile video calling and mobile video conferencing gaining momentum now? There are three main reasons…first,
new user interfaces make these services easy to use, new smartphones and tablets have enhanced capabilities and the networks
are being upgraded to provide faster speeds and quality of experience.
The user experience will continue to improve and be more accessible (with Android
and Apple apps) so it’s available on many devices. This will make it even more mainstream and easily reachable by more
people.
Mobile Video Calling
Video calling is not currently a critical service (yet) but
it may become critical as more and more people get comfortable and collaborate on video.
Mobile operators have an opportunity to offer new video services
that enhance the user experience as consumers are typically very comfortable and confident in the services offered by their
operators.
How
important is interoperability? Video is a private service, can be invasive so it’s mainly used within known communities
or groups. It is also possible for the consumer to control and make the experience seamless by ensuring the group all uses
the same service. As long as the use for video calling and video conferencing is still mainly social, consumers will figure
it out. As mobile operators start to deploy these services, then interoperability will be another way to add value. In fact,
ensuring interoperability between mobile operators is a key way to compete with the OTT players.
What will be the most viable monetization?
There are two models emerging and neither includes a special charge for video. One model offers the service for free with
‘pay for data’ plans and one model will bundle video with a voice/messaging package for additional flat rate and
make it an unlimited (premium) package.
You cannot really charge for it unless the value is established. Once the service becomes critical, operators may
try to charge separately. There will likely be a way to charge for it since, for example, services like Skype charge to be
unrestricted and OTT services aren’t free either.
The Rise of
Mobile Cloud Services: BaaS Startups is Here (BaaS = back up as a service)
"Backend as a Service"
(BaaS) companies provide easily integrated cloud-based backends for mobile app developers.
Though
not as well known as Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or Platform as a Service (PaaS), the
BaaS ecosystem has quickly evolved from a niche vertical into an important industry segment.
The
industry segment took another step toward maturity this week with mobile development platform Appcelerator's announcement
of itsTitanium 2.0 SDk, with significant backend cloud services tied into it. Meanwhile, Boston-based mobile cloud provider
Kinvey also released its platform to the public.
Many a startup has seen this scenario play
out: The company comes up with a great idea and starts to build it, only to see several other startups release the same idea
at the same time. They battle with each other over user interfaces and feature sets even as the market they created booms,
and more and more companies jump in.
The ultimate winners may or may not be the companies that
had the idea first.
This is exactly what's happening in the sector for mobile development.
The standard bearer for
the BaaS companies was StackMob, joined quickly by Parse, Kinvey andCocoafish.
There are now more than
a dozen mobile cloud service providers across the world.
Appcelerator's announcement comes in response to its quarterly report on
the mobile industry - compiled with research firm IDC - which revealed that nearly 60% of Appcelerator's developer partners
wanted some kind of backend cloud functionality for their apps.
App developers' need for such backend cloud functionality as push notifications and location services, photo and
file sharing, user management, chat, ratings, and reviews, also justified the company's purchase of Cocoafish earlier this
year. In many ways, the IDC survey and Appcelerator's movement into the space justify the existence of the entire industry
segment.
Dubbed Appcelerator Cloud Services (ACS),
the BaaS solution has been tied to the company's development platform to be able to write apps with Titanium, Objective-C,
Java, PhoneGap, Sencha and HTML5 (among similar services) for native, hybrid or mobile Web deployment.
What Appcelerator has done with Cocoafish is take a BaaS system and integrate it
into its own Titanium SDK. Outside of tying Cocoafish to Titanium, though, there is little that the rebranded "ACS"
has that other mobile cloud service providers do not already have.
ACS provides: user management, photo storing and sharing, rich location storage, social integration, custom data
objects, push notifications, check-ins, status updates, chat, ratings, discussion forums, messaging templates, client (device)
identification and unstructured storage.
Battle to Be the Best
Appcelerator Cloud Services is now a strong entrant into the BaaS ecosystem, but how does it stand up against the
rest of the sector? Kinvey released its patform to the public this week and offers a strong suite of capabilities. With mobile cloud service companies popping
up seemingly every month, there is a lot of competition in the space.
It is
difficult to ascertain which companies offer the fullest integration.
There are at least 20 companies
that now focus on BaaS in one form or another:
Stackmob, Parse, Kinvey, Apple's iCloud, RhoMobile,
Appcelerator (Cocoafish), FeedHenry Astrum Space, Scotty App, Webmynd, YorAPI, CloudyRec, Applicasa, QuickBlox, mobDB, Netmera,
Kumulos, CodeCloud.io, Sencha.io,Tiggzi and Zipline Games (through its Moai platform).
There
are also a couple of large companies that could move into this space very easily, including Amazon with its AWS products,
Microsoft with its Azure Cloud, Google with App Engine, and Rackspace.
"From a technology
perspective, the growth in the mobile ecosystem has created a brand-new development stack," said Kinvey CEO Sravish Sridhar.
"The old stack is dying. The new client stack has Objective-C (iOS), Java (Android),
HTML5, Ruby and Node.js. On the business side, there is a shortage of mobile development skills because developers are learning
how to build apps on the new mobile stack. When they're doing this, they don't want to also build or learn new backend systems.
These technology and business drivers have made Backend as a Service platforms like Kinvey popular."
The goal of each BaaS system is to provide basically the same set of functions to mobile developers. Yet some have
broader goals while others focus on certain niches of the mobile development industry. For instance, iKnode calls itself a
Backend as a Service provider, but it is designed specifically for .NET architecture, which will limit its broader appeal.
CodeCloud.io is a hosted NodeJS and SQLite platform that gives it BaaS-like functionality
but also provides a narrower scope.
There are a couple things
to look for when determining the top BaaS providers. Foremost is REST API creation and management. REST (representational
state transfer) is a software architecture for distributing media from a website (or in this case, a mobile app). Any BaaS
provider worth its salt should have significant aptitude with REST APIs.
The companies with the
ability to create and manage REST APIs are StackMob, RhoMobile Parse, Kinvey, YorAPI (which calls itself an API as a Service),
Apstrata and Netmera.
To further narrow
the field, YorAPI CEO and founder Scott Ling identified the top functions for a BaaS provider:
User
profiles with social login support for Facebook and Twitter
Custom data objects and storage
Analytics and metrics
Push notification support
Rich
location data (Ling did not mention this specifically)
Not one of the BaaS startups does all of these
things (or does them all well).
Some companies focus on specific aspects, as YorAPI does
with its API creation service or mobDB as a mobile app storage client.
The best of the best in
the BaaS ecosystem do more than just provide certain functions, but also look to be an entire end-to-end cloud service that
can make app developers' lives easier.
"The top Backend as a Service providers are the ones solving the hard backend problems for developers.
Scale across clouds, security of data in the backend and on the apps, managing users across identity spaces and flexibility
to run custom business logic for your apps anywhere.
It's not just about being the data backend
anymore. To succeed in Backend as a Service, you have to provide a full-feature backend solution," said Sridhar.
This brings us back to the beginning. StackMob set the market for BaaS providers and the company is understandably
proud of that. While it does not do location, its claim to be the "complete technology stack for your mobile apps"
is not pure hyperbole.
Parse and Kinvey both do location, notifications, profile management and
analytics as well. While Appcelerator/Cocoafish does not specifically do location, it can analyze data from searchable fields
with location being a part of that. Israel-based Applicasa also has a significant technology stack.
Update:
StackMob does provide location services.
What is clear is that the startups that created the market
and set it up to be copied by other companies across the globe are still the leaders in the space.
They
have had more time to work on what they offer, have refined their approach and will cement their status going forward.
Mobile Video calling and video conferencing is a natural extension of voice and messaging for consumers.