As organizations seek ways to maintain real-time connections with their workforce and customers in an increasingly digital and mobile-centered world,the growth of mobile cloud will be a major force in shaping the business landscape and future tech decisions. This blog series will explore how the convergence of mobility and cloud will deliver unprecedented transformation for all organizations. This post will highlight the growth of mobile cloud and how any business in any vertical stands to benefit.

Mobile communications have fundamentally changed the waybusiness works. At the same time, cloud computing has become the new way of delivering and charging for IT services and functionality. This collision of technology -the "mobile cloud" -stands to significantly increase the overall value of mobility, as well as radically alter the way employees work and businesses operate.

In short, what we know about mobile cloud today can be summed up in three parts:

1. Mobile cloud is growing.A leading industry report estimates mobile cloud services will increase at a staggering pace from$500 million today to$4.4 billion in 2017, a scant three years away. It's also important to note that hybrid cloud environments are a major force in mobile cloud growth. By connecting private and public clouds, organizations can deliver the mobile, collaborative and rich video cloud services that enable today's new connected experiences.

2. Mobile cloud is the beginning of an evolution -and it's being driven by cloud-based applications.Mobile cloud will change not onlywhereemployees can work, but this convergence of two technology tools will completely change theway business works. A key component of this is the growth of applications in the cloud, with personalized experiences delivered in real-time, everywhere and anywhere. According to a recent Cisco study, 96% of IT decision makers said that collaboration apps are primarily accessed on mobile by employees. This behavior also supports the prediction that the percentage of enterprise apps adapted for mobile will grow from 31% to 42% in the next year.

3. Mobile cloud is a significant part of moving theInternet of Everything(IoE) forward.As people, processes and things become connected and always on the go, more data will be communicated through mobile cloud. For example, Cisco VNI data predicts that mobile cloud traffic will grow 12-fold from 2013 to 2018, a compound annual growth rate of 64 percent.

Today's increasingly networked connection of people, data, processes and things -the Internet of Everything (IoE) -offers unprecedented opportunities for utilizing mobile cloud technology through interconnected clouds (Intercloud) and other solutions to meet the demands of today's mobile-enabled workforce.

Businesses are increasingly exploring the use of private, public and hybrid cloud for cost-effectiveness and fast delivery of applications and services. As a result, organizations need options to keep their employees connected to one another and establish lasting connections with customers, and IT and business leaders must recognize cloud and mobility strategies as one business decision path and not two independent concepts.

Key elements are already in place to make this possible. The convergence of smartphones, mobile devices and the cloud is already happening and becoming more advanced over time. This existing technology is paving the way for many more mobile 'smart things,' such as wearables, that are gaining traction as mainstream tools and will continue to grow demand for cloud services.

Part of this is because on their own, mobile devices are powerful and intricate apparatuses capable of storing, transferring and calculating a decent amount of data. As powerful as they are, they do have limitations on just how much data they can process and store.

This is where cloud becomes an essential part of the mobile cloud duo. Through cloud services, true mobility can be better realized as information and data are delivered in real-time.

People are on the move and as they work, shop and communicate across the globe, their devices go with them and more information will need to be sent, shared and stored. With the essential mobile and cloud foundation pieces in place, businesses across a multitude of industries can join these technologies in line with the Internet of Everything. This will add more value to their mobile connectivity and in turn, deliver value to their customer and employee bases.

Throughout this mobile cloud blog series, we will discuss what actions CXOs can take to leverage new and existing technologies to reap the benefits of complementary strategy uniting mobility and cloud. Be sure to stay tuned for the next post, which will offer a deep-dive into how mobile cloud stands to change everything.

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Additional Resources:

• Read Taking Care of Business in the Mobile Cloud
• Read The Road to 'Cloud Nine'