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It will seem far-fetched to some, but cloud computing is going to revamp the mobile computing landscape.

Indeed, it’s a central proposition of Management Strategies for the Cloud Revolution that a contradictory trend is underway: Internet data centers are becoming larger and more powerful while the end user device that accesses them is getting smaller and smaller.

The Smartphone or perhaps larger keyboard device, but something smaller than a netbook, is the end user client of the future. Mobile devices are much easier to carry than a laptop. The mobile device of the future will be able to access numerous wireless networks. New mobile devices will take on the user interface supplied by the available service provider while linking seamlessly to the home office’s business applications.
 
How can that be? On the contrary, current data center operators and IT professionals are tearing their hair out over the proliferation of individual devices they’re being asked to support. No sooner do they add the iPhone to their list than they’re confronted by an employee with the latest Android model. They already had built in BlackBerry support. Do they really need to add Windows Phone 7?

Giving business users the right links to their data and most useful business applications, like a customer relationship management system, remains a huge challenge for most IT departments. While it’s become much simpler to provide e-mail access with a mobile device, mobile e-mail access can be a challenge to manage when no standard mobile device is in use throughout the company.

A micro hypervisor on the phone and cloudbased trans-coding services will change all that. Employees will function as consumers, they will be allowed to do what they are already inclined to do—pick out the device they like rather than the one they’re directed to get—and make use of it inside the company. No more carrying a business phone and personal phone. The device of the future will be equipped with a software hypervisor that allows it to receive and translate the user interfaces and applications of different networks. You will still have to pay for each network, but you’ll be able to pay in small PayPal type increments for an hour’s use or a day’s use.

In the near future, your business applications will be interfaced to a cloud service that can translate their business logic and user interfaces into the formats needed by different devices. The enterprise developers will write the application once, and an external cloud service operator will ensure it runs everywhere.

I understand there are still technical and proprietary barriers to mobility. The growth of cloud computing is going to undermine those barriers and ultimately cause them to fall. Those who don’t get on board with a unified mobile computing infrastructure will be left behind.

 Rich sets of services will pour out of the cloud to the subscribers. Developers will not be constrained by the specifications needed to develop one vendor’s platform. Rather, they will design to a common cloud platform, and cloud operators will ensure that their applications can be presented on various networks. Operators may add headers and footers and ads to the presentation, based on their agreements with carriers. Developers won’t care, provided they’re paid on the basis of reaching a much larger set of users.

The vertically integrated iPhone, as pioneering as it is, is not the right example. The future will focus on a horizontally integrated cloud. A horizontally integrated cloud framework is closer to the Volantis.com Content Delivery Platform used by builders of phone stores for multiple telecom carriers.

In Europe, Content Delivery Platform serves as the basis for application stores that can be visited by users of Telenor, Telefonica, T-Mobile, Orange, Cosmote and Turkcell, as well as three UK and Hong Kong cell phone service suppliers. The platform has a database that tells it how to serve 6,700 individual devices.

Why should every software application writer need to know what that database does? Put the expertise in the cloud. Build operational services around it. Give the developers the ability to revise, extend and self service their applications without a network. With the advancements in mobility technology, your IT department will be linking your business applications and your employees in the cloud.

Charles Babcock is editor-at-large at InformationWeek and the author of Management Strategies for the Cloud Revolution due out May 14 at Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.