Let's discuss the rapid adoption of "App Stores", and the types of applications that are being enabled for a variety of devices, primarily tablets and smartphones. While these applications are each written to deliver unique capabilities and take advantage of the platform they are designed for, as well as being written for different platforms (for example, Android apps are developed in JAVA, Apple IOS apps in Objective C) they share a common enabling technology: REST API access to a storage cloud.
This approach is rapidly enabling new applications, which differ from older approaches like client server, virtual desktop and Web browser enabled applications in very important ways. The backend infrastructure ( a REST API storage cloud) is a simple, massively scalable server-based solution, that can reside within the enterprise data center (a private cloud), or at an IT Service Provider (either a hosted private cloud or a public cloud). It is easy to scale, easy to manage, and by providing a consistent storage backend, it allows developers to focus on their applications and associated business logic versus worrying about the backend architecture. This provides for a "separation of concerns" in that Web, Windows, MAC, Android or IOS applications can be substantially different, but they all use the same REST API of the storage cloud they depend on. As your application use and portfolio grows, you simply scale the storage cloud, versus having to make significant changes to the server infrastructure, as is the case with client server, virtual desktop or Web browser enabled applications.
The disruptive wave is coming fast, and you will see it bringing new capabilities and applications for that large screen in your automobile (watch for car makers offering applications in App Stores), a touch screen on your refrigerator, as well as enterprise applications that will support tablets and smart phones. Think about estimating at a job site with an application on a tablet, or estimating a property insurance damage claim with a tablet, the application is on the tablet, and the data could reside in multiple storage clouds.
Expect to see more enterprise applications taking advantage of this low cost, and easy way to deliver the kind of applications their employees and partners need.
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