Where is the Mobility in Mobile Cloud Computing?

Where is the Mobility in Mobile Cloud Computing?



Author(s)：Al-Sakib Khan Pathan

Now-a-days, Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) has been under intense investigation from various perspectives by many researchers around the globe. But, exactly where is the mobility in this emerging technology? What would be the imperatives to address to make it a reality with true sense of mobility?

Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) refers to an emerging infrastructure where both of the data storage and the data processing happen outside the mobile device from which an application is launched. With even having very little software or data in the handheld mobile devices, users can get cloud services in an MCC setting. Thus, it enables anytime, anywhere computing and storage.

Al-Sakib Khan Pathan, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) published an editorial article on this topic in the International Journal of Internet and Distributed Systems, Volume 1, Number 3, August 2013 by Scientific Research Publishing. His research team at the Networking and Distributed Computing Laboratory at IIUM is working on some of the aspects of MCC. He writes in the article that the concept of MCC “.. does not basically make the cloud computing “mobile” but rather it could be considered as a wireless extension of cloud service facilities. All the wirelessly connected computing devices use the wireless communication technologies to access the Internet and thus, the resources of the cloud to get the tasks done. This, being the essence of the concept, when the actual cloud infrastructure remains not-mobile, many challenges and issues come forward.” These issues would be similar to the existing issues for static cloud infrastructure.

The article argues that to achieve true mobility of the cloud, the entire cloud service providing infrastructure needs to be built on (or, supported by) the mobile hand-held devices, which would require more advanced technologies for providing long steady battery lifetime – possibly with dynamic energy-harvesting technologies. If the numerous number of handheld computing devices surrounding us could hold the cloud providing-service forming a more dynamic cloud, then only it could be called a true Mobile Cloud Computing infrastructure!

Dr. Sakib comments that this is an open area where combined research works are needed from the angles of both Computer Science and Electrical and Electronics Engineering. Security and user-privacy would surely be a critical issue however; some parts of the resources of the highly sophisticated future mobile devices with long battery lifetime may be dedicated for sharing and supporting the Mobile Cloud, in the truest sense!