Mobile Cloud Ecosystems: Evaluating the feasibility and viability of smartphones as a shared resource pool

The increasing ubiquity and capabilities of smartphones provide opportunities to combine their processing power, storage, connectivity and sensors into a shared resource pool for end-users and service providers. This is analogous to the concept of cloud computing, in which cloud computing datacenters provide a shared resource pool. Several technological architectures and prototypes exist in which smartphones themselves serve as such a mobile cloud computing resource pool. However, little guidance is available regarding the possibilities for commercialization of mobile cloud computing. This study identifies factors influencing the feasibility and viability of the mobile cloud concept in order to provide input for future mobile cloud business models. To this end the opportunities for mobile cloud to deliver multi-sided platforms are explored. Multi-sided platforms serve as matchmakers between supply and demand side customers, while the platform owner can benefit from mediating between different types of customers. Mobile cloud platforms can mediate between end-users of mobile cloud services, individuals providing smartphone resources and service providers. To evaluate the feasibility and viability of mobile cloud platforms, ecosystems theory is used to formulate a set of qualitative criteria for the role divisions, structures and performance of multi-sided platforms. The criteria have been applied in fourteen semi-structured interviews with mobile industry experts, resulting in a range of success factors and inhibitors for mobile cloud ecosystems. With regards to ecosystem role divisions it is noted that mobile cloud platforms are most likely to succeed when positioned in existing strong ecosystems with large user bases of service providers and service consumers, such as those of the handset operating systems and internet based service providers. Operators lack such ecosystems and innovation capabilities and are therefore less likely mobile cloud platform owners. However, their support may still be required as end-users incur data subscription costs and cause inter-operator traffic handoff when sharing smartphone resources via the operator network. Billing mechanisms between users and between operators may need to be adapted to take this into account. With regards to ecosystem structure a mobile cloud platform owner can benefit from the revenues obtained by providing third parties and end-users access to a shared mobile resource pool, which may include unique and desired resources such as sensors. However, this coordinating platform ownership position may be difficult to maintain as similar access to mobile resources may be obtained by installing specific-purpose applications on smartphones. Operators and handset OS developers may therefore struggle to maintain platform control as internet-based service providers can use web-based cross-platform applications to gain access to any number of smartphone resources, regardless of geography and hardware. The performance of mobile cloud ecosystems is currently considered to be hampered due to current technological limitations and market conditions. Scarce and perishable smartphone resources, limited, expensive bandwidth and lack of clear end-user sharing incentives are the most visible hurdles, along with the security, privacy and legal concerns associated with smartphone resource sharing. While some of these issues may be addressed over time with technical and network improvements, these improvements may also disrupt the need for smartphone resource sharing. Faster operator networks diminish the need to share connectivity, while increasing smartphone power and cloud computing datacenters reduce the need to offload computing tasks to other smartphones. This potential performance of mobile cloud platforms is expected to change when more collaborative services making use of multiple devices are conceived, rather than considering mobile devices as a straightforward resource pool akin to cloud computing datacenters. A shared pool of smartphone sensors is expected to lead to innovations of which both end-users and service providers can benefit. Additionally it is noted that in private or community environments such as homes and offices some of these performance hurdles may not apply, as they provide an environment where trust and cost are less of an issue and appliances are more visible than in a general purpose resource pool. Follow-up research towards mobile cloud platforms could focus on mechanisms to award smartphones users for opting in to a shared resource pool. Furthermore, operator, device and service provider centric ecosystems could be further specified in terms of role divisions, relations and platform assets shared using the success factors and inhibitors uncovered in this research as a basis. Finally, as mobile cloud can potentially seamlessly integrate with the traditional cloud, future research could explore ways to optimize whether the resources of a traditional cloud datacenter, a local mobile cloud resource or a remote mobile cloud resource are acquired depending on cost and connection properties.