Mobile Commerce Explodes, Cloud Will Contain

Grazed from MidsizeInsider. Author: Jason Hannula.

Mobile commerce has exploded in the last year. It is outpacing the growth of e-commerce by 200 percent, and 63 percent of people expect to shop via their smartphone in the next year, according to an infographic on NEXTlevel. Additionally, for users accessing e-commerce sites, mobile devices account for 48 percent of the time spent on the site by consumers. Constant connection to potential customers via their mobile device of choice offers significant opportunities for consumer marketing.

Cloud Containment

In a review conducted one year after the 2012 Forrester Research forecast for cloud computing, James Staten reported in ZDNet that the cloud had been predicted to be a natural partner to mobile commerce, but this has yet to play out as expected. Success has been found in utilizing or providing mobile back-end service layers, and these services handle both the elastic response required by mobile clients and the insulation of back office and data centers from traffic explosions associated with mobile engagement. Bypassing the mobile back-end service model has lead to poor performance for mobile end-user devices and the corporate back end…

The Technology Connection

The pace of investment in mobile customer engagement will not slow as marketing leaders push for a place on every consumer’s smartphone and tablet. Missteps are still possible when even the best technology solution is not implemented correctly or if it is deployed for the wrong reason. IT professionals that are embedded early in the development of the mobile strategy will fully understand the goals as compared to those getting involved at later stages when the limited project view may not fully reveal all strategic targets. When IT professionals provide input on the development of mobile strategy, they are positioned to ensure that the investment is directed to solutions that best serve the customer and the business…

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