Mobile cloud computing is changing the user experience, thanks in large part to containers and containerizing mobile workloads
Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last few years, you know that enterprises have flocked to containers as their de facto development and deployment model. According to IDC, organizations are now entering “a transition phase where they are learning new container skills, methodologies, and processes as they begin to both build new cloud-native applications and refactor and modernize existing applications.”
One of the prime areas for this innovation is in mobile cloud computing, where technology advances are now allowing more mobile workloads to be containerized using Android as the guest operating system. According to the Linux Foundation, more than 80% of new smartphones sold run Android, which is based on the Linux kernel.
Containerized mobile apps delivered by telcos, with their ability to tap into unlimited compute and storage capacity in the cloud, are set to create disruptive mobile experiences for 4G and LTE customers now and 5G users in the future. Let’s look at five of the changes we’ll see.
Thanks to the ability to run Android in the cloud, applications no longer need to be delivered as locally installed software binaries but rather can become remotely streamed content from the cloud, freeing apps from hardware compatibility constraints.
As a result, apps can be discovered and consumed as seamlessly as media such as YouTube or Spotify are now. Telco operators can have their own branded distribution channel for apps, thus breaking away from the Google-Apple duopoly of centralized app stores. Telco-owned app catalogs open new avenues for new value-added services and revenue streams.
As 5G takes hold, there will be more than 42 million active cloud gamers by 2024 and a market worth $4.5 billion, ABI Researchpredicts. But technical challenges must be overcome. Cloud gaming places a high demand on various hardware components, specifically GPUs that provide the underlying foundation for every video streaming solution. Graphic- and memory-intensive mobile games must be scaled to vast amounts of users while retaining the responsiveness and ultra-low latency demanded by gamers.
By removing the need to download a game locally on a device, a containerized mobile platform helps get the most out of available hardware capacity and optimizes the placement of new containers based on available capacity and resource requirements of specific containers.
