VOLUME 
Virtualization and the availability of mobile broadband clearly provide the platform to enable mass utilization of cloud-computing. But cloud computing will only take off on a mass market basis when desktop and mobile environments, as well as other digital service-like media and collaboration tools, become securely accessible and usable by non-technical users, on-demand, from any device.
This translates into multi-billion-dollar opportunities for the companies that get it right. Forrester states that to the smart players will come billions in new revenues as consumers add new subscriptions and devices to their lives that make it simple to access cloud-computing services on the go, seamlessly, anywhere.
The 451 Group, an industry research organization, predicts that desktop and application virtualization will be the next big thing, and with 15 Mbps mobile broadband now available in 110 countries, and over 250 compatible phones and HSDPA PC cards, there are already 522 million potential users, for a “PC-in-the-Cloud” service that is growing at a healthy 70% and will likely continue to do so for many years to come.
Given this vast market opportunity, the mobile “Net” experience to date has been downright frustrating.
According to Forrester Research, despite huge advances in mobile data services and connectivity options, and steady improvements in laptop and handset design, there is still a basic mismatch of the service/device to the opportunity. Consumers want access to their now-familiar desktop, with their own files, media, news, communication, social computing and peripheral resources, on-the-go. To date this has either meant lugging a laptop (see figure below) and searching out Wi-Fi hotspots or severely compromising on what you can do by using a Web browser on a mobile phone or kiosk-based personal computer.
Desktop virtualization and the mobile broadband Internet, smartly coupled with SIMtone’s new, Universal Cloud-Computing Platform to produce simple, safe and ubiquitously available access to rich virtual desktops and applications in the cloud, usable with traditional devices as well as with new, clever, network-aware terminals, will create a massive new market for virtualization that will far outsize the current projections, and drive a complete infrastructure refresh cycle not only in the enterprise, but throughout the technology, telecommunication and consumer industries.
The Problem: (based on a Forrester Research Report)
- Phone bloat. Multimedia phones are bulky, sure, but still disappoint with pictures and video — and their battery life still frustrates, especially after six months of use.
- Annoyingly large laptops. These devices either are still too heavy to carry all the time or rely on lots of add-on accessories and access packages to make them work.
- Mismatched Internet services. Let’s face it: The Web is designed to work on the 14-inch monitor of a well connected PC. It is still hard to get good Internet value on a mobile device.
- Insurmountable ties to legacy architectures. Many of the device architectures and silicon of both handsets and laptops were designed for a different purpose. Even today, these architectures — including chipsets, operating systems and communications protocols — are fiendishly difficult to adapt to the mobile Internet.
