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The purpose of this conceptual paper is to explore the meaning of cloud computing for mobile communication. The paper answers the question “what is mobile cloud computing?” and how is it related to the generic cloud computing concept?

This is an explanatory conceptual paper, based on literature review and exploring potential use cases, focused on the use of mobile cloud for service, platform or infrastructure access. The authors exclude the discussion of the traditional cloud concept in back office processes of telecom operators, and service providers.

Where cloud computing is focused on pooling of resources, mobile technology is focused on pooling and sharing of resources locally enabling alternative use cases for mobile infrastructure, platforms and service delivery. The paper discusses relevant concepts and offers examples of use cases.

The value of mobile cloud solutions is not yet explicit, but needs further attention. Research should focus on the relation between mobile cloud computing, platforms and eco systems. From a user perspective the willingness to share pooled resources needs further attention.

Mobile cloud computing offers the possibility that disruptive applications might impact the mobile eco system; reinforcing or weakening business models of core players like handset providers, telecom operators, and service providers.

A lot of attention is paid to cloud computing and to platform discussions, papers on mobile cloud are scarce. This paper offers the current state of the art and a research outlook.

Cloud computing becomes mobile when a mobile device tries to access the shared pool of computing resources provided by the cloud, on demand. Mobile applications may enrich their functionality by delegating heavy tasks to the clouds as the remote processing and storage have become possible by adding asynchronous behavior in the communication. However, developing mobile cloud applications involves working with services and APIs from different cloud vendors, which mostly are not interoperable across clouds. Moreover, by adding asynchronicity, mobile applications must rely on push mechanisms which are considered to be moderately reliable, and thus not recommended in scenarios that require high scalability and quality of service (QoS). To counter these problems, and the purpose of this paper, is to design a middleware framework, Mobile Cloud Middleware (MCM), which handles the interoperability issues and eases the use of process‐intensive services from smartphones by extending the concept of mobile host.

MCM is developed as an intermediary between the mobile and the cloud, which hides the complexity of dealing with multiple cloud services from mobiles. Several applications are presented to show the benefits of mobiles going cloud‐aware. Moreover, to verify the scalability of MCM, load tests are performed on the hybrid cloud resources using well known load balancing mechanisms like HAProxy and Tsung.

From the study it was found that it is possible to handle hybrid cloud services from mobiles by using MCM. The analysis demonstrated that the MCM shows reasonable performance levels of interaction with the user, thus validating the proof of concept. Moreover, MCM decreases the effort in developing mobile cloud applications and helps in keeping soft‐real time responses by using its asynchronous approach.

MCM fosters the utilization of different types of cloud services rather than the traditional mobile cloud services based on data synchronization. By offloading heavy tasks to the clouds, the framework extends the processing power and storage space capabilities of the constrained smart phones. The applications mentioned in the paper bring an added value by being success stories for mobile cloud computing domain in general.

The purpose of this paper is to rank the users’ attitude on major components of mobile cloud computing (MCC) security and investigate the degree of impact of these components on MCC security as a whole.

Hypotheses were evolved and tested by data collected through an online survey-questionnaire. The survey was administered to 363 users from Chinese organizations. Statistical analysis was carried out and structural equation model was built to validate the interactions.

The eight components of MCC security in the order of importance are as follows: mobile device related, user identity related, deployment model related, application-level security issues, data related, virtualization related, network related and service delivery related. The empirical analysis validates that these security issues are having significant impact on perceived security of MCC.

Constant vigilance on these eight issues and improving the level of user awareness on these issues enhance the overall security.

These issues can be used for designing and developing secured MCC system.

While several previous research has studied various security factors in the MCC security domain, a consolidated understanding on the different components of MCC security is missing. This empirical research has identified and ranked the major components of MCC security. The degree of impact of each of these components on overall MCC security is identified. This provides a different perspective for managing MCC security by explaining what components are most important.

This study aims to argue that user’s continued use behavior is contingent upon two perceptions (i.e. the app and the provider). This study examines the moderating effects of user’s perceptions of apps and providers on the effects of security and privacy concerns and investigate whether assurance mechanisms decrease such concerns.

This study conducts a scenario-based survey with 694 mobile cloud computing (MCC) app users to understand their perceptions and behaviors.

This study finds that while perceived value of data transfer to the cloud moderates the effects of security and privacy concerns on continued use behavior, trust only moderates the effect of privacy concerns. This study also finds that perceived effectiveness of security and privacy intervention impacts privacy concerns but does not decrease security concerns.

Prior mobile app studies mainly focused on mobile apps and did not investigate the perceptions of app providers along with app features in the same study. Furthermore, International Organization for Standardization 27018 certification and privacy policy notification are the interventions that exhibit data assurance mechanisms. However, it is unknown whether these interventions are able to decrease users’ security and privacy concerns after using MCC apps.

On account of its easy and intuitive usage as well as obvious advantages (e.g. access to work data from anywhere, at any time and through any means) the evolutionary cloud computing paradigm favors the use of shadow IT. Since many employees are not aware of the associated risks and possible legal violations, unauthorized use of cloud computing services could result in substantial risk exposure for any company. The purpose of this paper is to explore and to extend the body of knowledge concerning the topic of cloud computing with regard to shadow IT.

The aim of this contribution is to identify the reasons for the use of cloud computing services and the resulting shadow IT from an employee’s perspective, to demonstrate the counteractions a company may take against the unauthorized use of cloud computing services and to elaborate on the inherent opportunities and risks. We follow a mixed-methods approach consisting of a systematic literature review, a cloud computing awareness study, a vignette study and expert interviews.

Based on a triangulation of the data sets, the paper at hand proposes a morphological box as well as a two-piece belief-action-outcome model, both from an employee’s and employer’s point of view. Our findings ultimately lead to recommendations for action for employers to counteract the risk exposure. Furthermore, also employees are sensitized by means of insights into the topic of unauthorized usage of cloud computing services in everyday working life.

The limitations of the triangulation reflect the limitations of each applied research method. These limitations justify why a mixed-methods approach is favored – rather than relying on a single source of data – because data from various sources can be triangulated.

The paper includes recommendations for action for the handling of the unauthorized usage of cloud computing services within a company, e.g., the set up of a company-wide cloud security strategy and the conduction of an anonymous employee survey to identify the status quo.

This paper fulfills an identified need to explore the usage of cloud computing services within the context of shadow IT.

In this research, the authors focus on mobile cloud computing (MCC) collaboration apps that are multiplatform and send the users’ data to the cloud. Despite their benefits, MCC collaboration apps raise privacy concerns, as the users’ information is sent to the cloud where users lack direct control. This study aims to investigate why users disclose information to MCC apps despite privacy concerns and examine the effect of security and assurance mechanisms (i.e. privacy policies and ISO/IEC 27018 certification) on users’ perceptions and information disclosure. Based on three surveys conducted in 2016 (n = 515), 2017 (n = 505) and 2018 (n = 543), this study finds mixed results regarding the relationships among security, assurance mechanisms, utilitarian benefits and information disclosure.

This study conducted three scenario-based surveys in the USA in 2016 (n = 515), 2017 (n = 505) and 2018 (n = 543).

This study finds mixed results of relationships among security, assurance mechanisms, utilitarian benefit and information disclosure.

With proliferation of MCC apps, the investigation of how users make privacy decision to disclose personal information to these apps is sparse. This study, for the first time, investigates whether the signals of assurance mechanism decrease users’ privacy concerns. This study also examines the interplay between security and privacy within information disclosure behavior. Finally, this study was conducted in 3 years to enhance the generalizability and robustness of findings.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has surpassed expectations in opening up different possibilities for machines from different walks of life. Cloud service providers are pushing. Edge computing reduces latency, improving availability and saving bandwidth.

The exponential growth in tensor processing unit (TPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) combined with different types of sensors has enabled the pairing of medical technology with deep learning in providing the best patient care. A significant role of pushing and pulling data from the cloud, big data comes into play as velocity, veracity and volume of data with IoT assisting doctors in predicting the abnormalities and providing customized treatment based on the patient electronic health record (EHR).

The primary focus of edge computing is decentralizing and bringing intelligent IoT devices to provide real-time computing at the point of presence (PoP). The impact of the PoP in healthcare gains importance as wearable devices and mobile apps are entrusted with real-time monitoring and diagnosis of patients. The impact edge computing of the PoP in healthcare gains significance as wearable devices and mobile apps are entrusted with real-time monitoring and diagnosis of patients.

The utility value of sensors data improves through the Laplacian mechanism of preserved PII response to each query from the ODL. The scalability is at 50% with respect to the sensitivity and preservation of the PII values in the local ODL.

This study/ paper aims to empirically examine the user attitude on perceived security of enterprise systems (ES) mobility. Organizations are adopting mobile technologies for various business applications including ES to increase the flexibility and to gain sustainable competitive advantage. At the same time, end-users are exposed to security issues when using mobile technologies. The ES have seen breaches and malicious intrusions thereby more sophisticated recreational and commercial cybercrimes have been witnessed. ES have seen data breaches and malicious intrusions leading to more sophisticated cybercrimes. Considering the significance of security in ES mobility, the research questions in this study are: What are the security issues of ES mobility? What are the influences of users’ attitude towards those security issues? What is the impact of users’ attitude towards security issues on perceived security of ES mobility?

These questions are addressed by empirically testing a security model of mobile ES by collecting data from users of ES mobile systems. Hypotheses were evolved and tested by data collected through a survey questionnaire. The questionnaire survey was administered to 331 users from Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). The data was statistically analysed by tools such as correlation, factor analysis, regression and the study built a structural equation model (SEM) to examine the interactions between the variables.

The study results have identified the following security issues: users’ attitude towards mobile device security issues; users’ attitude towards wireless network security issues; users’ attitude towards cloud computing security issues; users’ attitude towards application-level security issues; users’ attitude towards data (access) level security issues; and users’ attitude towards enterprise-level security issues.

The study results are based on a sample of users from Chinese SMEs. The findings may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to examine the model in a different context. The issues requiring further investigation are the role of gender and type of device on perceived security of ES mobile systems.

The results show that the key security issues are related to a mobile device, wireless network, cloud computing, applications, data and enterprise. By understanding these issues and the best practices, organizations can maintain a high level of security of their mobile ES.

Apart from understanding the best practices and the key issues, the authors suggest management and end-users to work collaboratively to achieve a high level of security of the mobile ES.

This is an empirical study conducted from the users’ perspective for validating the set of research hypotheses related to key security issues on the perceived security of mobile ES.

The purpose of this study was to map the quantity (frequency), quality (impact) and structural indicators (correlations) of research produced on cloud computing in 48 countries and 3 territories in the Asia continent.

To achieve the objectives of the study and scientifically map the indicators, data were extracted from the Scopus database. The extracted bibliographic data was first cleaned properly using Endnote and then analyzed using Biblioshiny and VosViewer application software. In the software, calculations include citations count; h, g and m indexes; Bradford's and Lotka's laws; and other scientific mappings.

Results of the study indicate that China remained the most productive, impactful and collaborative country in Asia. All the top 20 impactful authors were also from China. The other most researched areas associated with cloud computing were revealed to be mobile cloud computing and data security in clouds. The most prominent journal currently publishing research studies on cloud computing was “Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing.”

The study is the first of its kind which identified the quantity (frequencies), quality (impact) and structural indicators (correlations) of Asian (48 countries and 3 territories) research productivity on cloud computing. The results are of great importance for researchers and countries interested in further exploring, publishing and increasing cross country collaborations related to the phenomenon of cloud computing.

In order to solve the problem of how to reduce the service delay of edge computing, this paper proposes an edge cloud framework, which contains four groups under different locations between mobile edge nodes and users. A feasible cost scheme can be obtained by calculating the cost in different simulation groups. Furthermore, we give suggestions on how to deploy edge nodes at a reasonable cost for users effectively.

This paper is motivated by the IoT-Cloud framework; they are divided according to whether the nodes have templates required by users and the distance from users to distinguish various consumption levels and classify the testing result. Based on four different groups satisfying reasonable resource allocation, the cost was studied. The work focuses on the unpredictable movement within the test range. For assignment and scheduling of template tasks at each time slot, the Edge-Cloud scheme is proposed to reduce the cost.

According to the simulation results in this paper, the total cost of the four groups is lower when the closest node-set satisfies the user service directly. To improve the probability that the closest node-set can meet general requests of users and provide them with faster and more economical network services, increasing the number of edge nodes within the range of user activities is suggested.

An Edge-Cloud framework is constructed in four groups, and the conclusion of a feasible cost scheme came out.