Introduction
Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) is an architectural approach that combines the processing power of mobile devices like smartphones or tablets with cloud-based resources. Remotely rather than locally, as a result of computational augmentations, MCC’s mobile devices may augment resources from various cloud-based accounts. The combination creates a new kind of mobile computing that provides a seamless experience on any device, or when switching between devices.
Mobile Cloud Computing Architecture
The Mobile Cloud Computing Architecture Consists of Two Major Components.
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The first major component is the virtualized computing core (VC), a hosted cloud service that hosts various cloud computing services needed to run on the mobile device.
The second major component is the client-side application (CSA): It executes the MCC applications on the host device. The CSA uses a cloud execution service when executing applications for a client. During the execution of the MCC application in the CES, it can use various cloud resources to augment its capabilities.
Types Of Mobile Cloud Computing
Types of Cloud-Based Resources in MCC Are:
- Distant Immobile Cloud Computing
- Hybrid Cloud Computing
- Distant Mobile Clouds
- Proximate Immobile Computing Entities
- Proximate Mobile Computing Entities
Amazon EC2 is an example of a distant immobile class. Cloudlets or surrogates are movable computing entities that are proximate immobile. Smartphones, tablets, and handheld gadgets falls to the class of mobile computing entities. Click here for more info.
Applications And Examples of Mobile Cloud Computing.
A mobile cloud program is a software program that we can access via our onboard computer. There are several real-life examples of cloud solutions, such as:
Email: This is a prominent example that lots of people use. Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo Mail are numerous examples of mobile email. When you check your emails through your smartphone, you’re using mobile cloud computing technology.
Social Media: It enables quick sharing of real-time data on social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. For example, a video recorded on a mobile device can be saved and shared with another mobile user.
Finance and Commerce: Using your phone or tablet to track your account balance, making a purchase on ecommerce platforms such as Amazon, Shopify, etc., is an example of mobile cloud computing, and its scalability makes it ideal for commerce and social media as well.
Healthcare: With cloud computing, accessing patient records through a mobile device is simple. Mobile healthcare also permits massive amounts of instantaneous data stored in the cloud, accessible via a mobile device. It enables convenience by allowing access to patient records when needed.
Why Mobile Cloud Computing?
Mobile Cloud Computing allows faster execution of applications because it has a built-in web browser used to execute the application. Applications can be executed even when a desktop or server-based applications are not available. It’s easy to use and applies a wide variety of one-handed devices at once.
Easier development and deployment: Mobile cloud computing provides an easy method of creating an application with minimum development efforts. It has more resource-efficient than traditional desktops and server-based software applications. It helps reduce capital expenses, also called CapEx, making mobile cloud computing a more cost-effective solution.
Increased Uptime: mobile cloud computing can provide higher uptime than traditional applications and is thus superior to those. You don’t have to invest in responsive machinery or servers that will operate for only a limited amount of time, both of which must be switched off after a certain period. Mobile cloud computing utilizes virtualized technology that allows it when and where needed, thereby increasing reliability. Mobile cloud applications have a higher degree of accessibility than traditional software.
Service Models of Mobile Cloud Computing
In mobile cloud computing, there are three service models. Software as a Service (SaaS) is an approach to delivering software to the user via the internet on a subscription without installing anything. In Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), computers and other computational resources are transferred from one organization to another. It lets the company provide server capacity, storage, and more for customers who don’t have these things in-house. It also lets them manage these resources with their staff of IT managers.
The last model is Platform as a Service (PaaS). In this model, the provider manages the virtualization of an operating system and makes applications available to the user for them to install and run. Applications are often integrated with other business systems. For example, Salesforce.com includes software from SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft.
Among these three service models, cloud computing has emerged as an effective way to solve many computing problems such as storage, sharing of a large amount of data, and providing internet connection. Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) are the two main service models in Cloud computing.
Advantages Of Mobile Cloud Computing
Mobile Cloud Computing provides more benefits for business clients than traditional desktop or server-based applications. Following are the benefits offered by Mobile Cloud Computing:
Cost-Effective – Mobile cloud computing uses virtualized computing resources that the cloud providers can easily provide at much lower costs than hosting software on mobile devices. It saves the cost of maintenance and operation, and hardware as clients tend to consume lesser power resources than their physical counterparts.
Flexible – Mobile cloud computing allows for flexibility in the usage of a device. Through usage in a cloud, the device can be easily and quickly shifted from one application to another. We can use the same device to run different applications as required by the user or the aim of execution.
Scalable – Wireless cloud computing handles scalability automatically and without physical limitations by operating on cloud platforms.
Affordable – Mobile cloud computing allows for the sole use of a device to host the applications and services while ensuring that they are available at a specific location. With this, you can access it anywhere and have full control over your devices.
Easy Updates – Updates are also easy to provide as applications need only to be hosted in the cloud server. And before updating, the device did not need any recertification.
Faster execution – Mobile cloud computing takes advantage of the capabilities of a single device or device group and utilizes its capabilities through web services. The selection of this application is faster due to the multitasking that occurs through spatial-visual processes. These benefits are more prominent for mobile devices with limited memory and processing power than desktop or server-based computers.
Though Cloud computing can be a solution to some of the issues with mobile cloud computing, it also has limitations. For instance, desktop applications cannot use cloud resources, and only device synchronization is limited to the latest changes. There is no infrastructure for distributed applications on the mobile cloud because there is no storage and maintaining virtual environments for individual programs on such a platform. Due to this reason, mobile cloud computing has yet to gain widespread acceptance among developers and requires certain improvements in the way it is composed and executed. Click here for more benefits.
Practices for Implementing Mobile Cloud Computing
Access Management Solution and Deploy Identity: Ensure solid access policies are in place to restrict accessibility and strengthen resources by enforcing least privilege rules. Privileged access should use session monitoring to audit and record access, ensuring privileges are role-based and minimal access necessary to operate is granted. With a zero-trust model, access will be tightly controlled, needing every person, electronic device, or system to be cross-checked and validated before connecting to your network’s systems or devices outside of the network perimeter.
Secure Your Endpoint: Coming up with new cloud computing projects isn’t always enough to ensure endpoint security is improved, as it’s indefinite. It can be beneficial to revisit existing security practices and confirm they are suitable for the new threats to get a start.
A standard defense-in-depth methodology incorporating firewalls, anti-malware, intrusion detection, and access control has been traditional for endpoint security. However, the impact of endpoint security considerations can be so complex that automation tools are necessary to stay abreast of the fashion. And in this case, Endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools and endpoint protection platforms (EPP) can help resolve this issue.
Vulnerability Management: Scan for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations and conduct security audits and testing to identify system vulnerabilities and possible security threats. Perform penetration testing of your network’s environment (on-premises and cloud) to determine risks and vulnerabilities.
Patch management: Create systematic processes to identify vulnerabilities in your system, and your cloud vendor’s security processes are updated regularly to crack down on known vulnerabilities. And also, you should analyze post-patching effects to address any issues between systems and environments.
Monitoring user activity: Analyze how cloud users use your business’s cloud environment. Evaluate your cloud users’ cloud culture as well. Casual use of data and data sharing could yield substantive personal data risks. For example, cloud computing enables users to retrieve automatically, archive, and transmit information from various sources. Soaring sharing could result not only in legitimate data leakages but additionally in data transmitted by non-authorized sources.
Password Management: Use these best practices for password management, including:
- Configure a minimum number of characters required for your password.
- Indicate the complexity requirements for passwords.
- Include a minimum of 10 previous passwords in the password history.
- Cancel existing passwords every ninety days, and set a security maximum password age and constant email alerts.
- To maintain a fresh set of local admin account passwords every month and yearly service account passwords, the administrator should reset them each 180 days.
- Tracking all password changes can aid with password auditing.
- Balance security concerns at different systems with an enterprise password management service to ensure consistent strong security at all levels.
Compliance Management: Compile alerts to select an audiovisual system so you can be notified when your organization may be out of compliance with applicable laws to avert untoward consequences.
Encryption: Your company’s enterprise data ought to be protected by data encryption in effect at all times. Consider the extra use of several encryption services throughout your databases, servers, and networks.
Monitoring: When choosing your cloud computing service and company, make sure they have continuous security monitoring for each environment and all systems.
Security Reporting: Review and adjust your cloud supplier’s platform-specific alerts and reports to locate and centralize your data from all connections and examine all environments at once to uncover a complete record of the computing environment’s security posture.
Challenges of Mobile Cloud Computing
Mobile Cloud Technology Faces Several Challenges, Such as The Issues Listed Below.
Security – The security provided by traditional applications is not applicable for mobile cloud computing. Mobile cloud computing is highly dependent upon the security of its execution environment. Hence, it poses more security risks than traditional applications since many external factors have access to the data sent to and received from the mobile cloud. Mobile cloud computing requires additional investment in hardware and software to ensure additional security while maintaining its high-performance levels.
Network Availability: The reliability of mobile networks influences the availability of mobile cloud computing services. If we lose network access entirely, we cannot use the application. This can be a limiting factor in areas with no high-speed internet access or limited network coverage.
Lack of Infrastructure – There is a lack of infrastructure for distributed applications as there is no means for creating virtual devices for running such applications.
performance: Mobile cloud apps are accessed across public networks hosted by remote servers. This leads to slower response in mobile cloud application.
Compatibility: The cloud infrastructure supports multiple platforms, which may be expensive to implement due to the requirements of different network connections.
Conclusion
In conclusion, MCC is an innovative approach to mobile computing that provides users with expanded capabilities and greater flexibility. MCC enables users to take full advantage of the capacity of their smartphones or tablets by combining the processing power of these devices with that available in the cloud. This hybrid approach can provide users with more functionality than they have on their devices alone, as well as additional services not available on either device alone.
MCC relies on cloud computing and mobile devices to create an environment where users can access the functionality of both of their devices without the need for separate servers. Since MCC allows for greater user interaction with each device, this hybrid method can utilize resources from a single client without relying on multiple nodes in the server-client relationship.
By following cloud security best practices and implementing the appropriate security tools, businesses can minimize risks and take full advantage of the benefits cloud computing offers.
Cloud computing provides many advantages such as cost savings, increased flexibility, and decreased risk of downtime. These advantages, though, are only accessible if your architecture is planned properly. Before starting a new MCC project, especially with existing customers, it’s recommended to have a professional cloud architect on board. If you’re consulting a third-party technology partner, make sure it’s one with similar projects in their resume.
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