Representatives from mobile operators and vendors gathered at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress today in Hong Kong to discuss ways the industry could tap into the fast-growing cloud computing space.
Ross Fielding, an executive director at Telstra, talked up the Australian market-leader’s high-tech Next G network as a platform that is allowing it to offer cloud services to enterprise customers. “We have been able to win big deals in the enterprise space and we are now looking at small businesses,” he said. “The market is driving the move to the cloud.” Meanwhile, Nava Levy – who heads up SaaS/cloud services at billing vendor Amdocs – said that service providers should attempt to position themselves as the “safe choice” for cloud services by offering carrier-class performance. “We know what telecom grade performance is, and we have the infrastructure,” she said. But she warned that the operators would need to make decisions on the extent to which they will partner with third parties in delivering mobile cloud services.

Other members of the discussion were IBM’s Stef Bensi, who addressed the problem of delivering cloud services over many different types of mobile device and showcased the vendor’s Lotus Live SaaS offering; and Cisco’s Robert Synnestvedt, who discussed drivers for mobile cloud computing such as bandwidth demands, the proliferation of IP devices and a rapidly changing service mix.

According to figures from research firm IDC last month, the market for worldwide cloud IT services is currently estimated at US$17.2 billion and is forecast to rise to US$42.2 billion by 2013. However, mobile cloud services only count for around 5 percent of the market today. AT&T of the US is the most recent mobile operator to make a move into the cloud computing space, announcing a storage service in conjunction with VMware and Sun earlier this week.