WSJ shows mobile communications benefit from the cloud; iPass cited

Monday, February 14th, 2011 Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor

Today, Jessica Twentyman, in the Wall Street Journal article, “One Cloud Fits All,” discusses how the mobile communications industry is likely be the chief beneficiary of cloud technology.

Downloaded, native smartphone apps face stiff competition from resources in the cloud. Why? The cloud is not limited by battery life, storage capacity, or processing power.

This is good news for smartphone users and for developers. “It’s better news still for mobile- phone users, who will be able to use any device they choose to access the same functions and data, says Evan Kaplan, chief executive of enterprise mobility specialist iPass Inc. That’s important, he says, because today’s users carry a number of different devices, including laptops, smartphones, and increasingly, tablet computers such as the Apple iPad.”

“It’s not the device that matters, it’s the person using it: One person, with one account, on many devices,” he says. “No matter what people have in their briefcase, pocket or purse, they want to be treated as one person, and this is where we see the real impact of cloud computing—platform independence.”

Another statistic: 97% of mobile workers carried two mobile devices and 50% carried three devices when they were travelling on business.

For more on empowering mobile workers with applications in the cloud, read the article.