Guest Editorial

  Mobile Cloud Computing and Applications

    In 2010, cloud computing gained momentum. Cloud computing is a model for real-time, on-demand, pay-for-use network access to a shared pool of configurable computing and storage resources. It has matured from a promising business concept to a working reality in both the private and public IT sectors. The U.S. government, for example, has requested all its agencies to evaluate cloud computing alternatives as part of their budget submissions for new IT investment.

    In recent years we have also witnessed the rapid growth of mobile applications due to the increasing popularity of smartphones and ubiquity of wireless access. Cloud computing fuels innovation in mobile computing and opens new pathways between mobile devices (where an application is launched) and the infrastructure (where data is stored and processed). Because mobile devices have intrinsic storage, processing, and battery power constraints, mobile applications often hit a performance wall. Unlimited computing and storage resources offered by cloud computing can help break through this wall and turn the problem into a vast opportunity for the growth of mobile computing.  According to the latest study from Juniper Research, the market for cloud-based mobile applications is expected to grow 88% annually and reach $9.5 billion by 2014.

    To a typical mobile user, a mobile application driven by the cloud should look and feel just like any native mobile applications installed and run in their mobile device. There are already some well-known cloud-based mobile applications; for example, Google’s Gmail for iPhone and Cisco’s WebEx on iPad.  These are largely run as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), in which a cloud provider’s applications are deployed and run in the cloud and can be accessed by users. In general, cloud computing goes beyond the SaaS model by offering computing and storage Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or application development Platform as a Service (PaaS). Each cloud service model has proved efficacious in desktop computing. However, the benefits of IaaS and PaaS in mobile cloud computing have not been fully exploited.

    This special issue of ZTE Communications discusses related issues in mobile cloud computing. The purpose is to provide an overview of this cutting edge field and to describe its development, trends, challenges, and current practices. Papers have been included that cover a broad spectrum of interesting topics, including mobile cloud computing architectures, mobile search and data management, energy management and sustainability, privacy and security, mobile social networks, and  novel cloud-assisted smartphone applications.

    In the paper, “A Survey of Mobile Cloud Computing,” Fan et al. classify mobile cloud computing systems. Two representative systems, Hyrax and Cloudlet, are discussed in detail. In their paper “Mirroring Smartphones for Good: A Feasibility Study,” Zhao et al. propose a framework that keeps a mirror for each smartphone on a computing infrastructure in the telecom network. In this framework, some computational workload is offloaded from a smartphone to its mirror. They demonstrate the efficacy of the framework in data caching applications and antivirus scanning services.

    “A Cloud-Based Virtualized Execution Environment for Mobile Applications,” by Hung et al. presents a cloud-based virtualized execution environment framework for mobile applications, with a focus on schemes for migrating applications and synchronizing data between execution environments. Performance and power saving issues involved in application migration are also discussed. In “Building a Platform to Bridge Low End Mobile Phones and Cloud Computing Services,” Tso et al. propose a Thumb-in-Cloud platform to break the performance wall in low-end mobile phones. The platform consists of virtual machines that are deployed in low-end phones for execution of mobile applications. It also consists of Thumb gateways that tailor cloud services by reformatting and compressing the service content to fit into the phone’s profile.

    Zhang et al. in “WiFace: A Secure Geosocial Networking System Using Wi-Fi Based Multihop MANET,” present a geosocial networking system running on a Wi-Fi based multihop ad hoc network platform for personal mobile devices. The system allows users to access cloud services in environments with or without networking infrastructure or GPS modules. In “A Case for Cloud-Based Mobile Search,” Gao et al. design an Internet search case for cloud-based mobile applications. Searches launched in a mobile device invoke a cloud-based search engine to fulfill the tasks. Key enabling technologies are discussed.

    “An On-Demand Security Mechanism for Cloud-Based Telecommunications Services,” by Lin et al. investigates the security issues in cloud computing and a security model is proposed based on a security domain division concept. This helps provide dynamic, on-demand, and differentiated protection for services.

    I am grateful to the authors who submitted for this special issue and to the reviewers who spent their valuable time to provide constructive feedback. I hope that you find this special issue interesting and useful.