Consumer Cloud: Concepts, Vendor Solutions, Industry Applications and Way Forward

Abstract

Over the years, consumers have been accessing the World Wide Web to perform one or more of the personal functions such as accessing email via messenger/phone communication; managing social and professional identities using networking sites; education and learning via the web; entertainment through listening to music and watching movies; and managing documents, organizing finances and going to the extent of managing small businesses over the web. The traditional discrete web-based solutions deal with consumer needs in a highly fragmented manner, through multiple discrete point solutions and devices. This has given rise to challenges in cross-leveraging data, missing contextual intelligence and lack of unified experience across applications leading to loss of productivity and opportunities. Solutions leveraging the cloud provision overcome several of these challenges and are becoming popular, e.g. Apple iCloud platform. Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon are fast building strategic partnerships with product vendors to bridge platform gaps and are bringing in innovations to grab a sizeable pie to emerge as a leader in the digital sphere of the consumer ecosystem. This chapter looks at the interesting scenarios for consumer clouds, vendors, technologies, industries and trends currently shaping up as they start to take centre stage in the consumer’s activities.