From a consumer perspective, apps are “mobile” when they can be used on portable devices, like smartphones. From an IT perspective, apps are “mobile” when they can be easily moved from one environment to another. While many had hoped that cloud computing would result in more of that second type of mobility (and less vendor lock-in), so far it hasn’t always been the case. In particular, apps deployed on platform as a service offerings such as VMForce have limited mobility.
However, some think this will soon change. John Newton, chairman and chief technology officer of vendor Alfresco, predicts, “As the cloud becomes more important, demands for interoperability and data portability will only increase.”
