2014 - the year of 'app-ification' on the Personal Cloud

In business, the seemingly unstoppable Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend has been a key driving force. But IT departments still tend to focus on the most visible part of this transformation: the actual device in the workplace. They now need to look at the bigger picture of this transformation, particularly on 'app-ification' – where the users expect an application for everything as well as the enabling seamless network access: wired or wireless.

Workplaces are transforming. Employees are becoming app-hungry consumers, expecting the same level of simple, effective connectivity and communication regardless of which personal device they choose to use, whether it’s a tablet, smartphone or laptop: their experience across any device must equal the same experience.

I call it the new era of the Personal Cloud. It’s all about users being able to use any device, anywhere, to access any service. Whether that's for business processes, storage, databases, emails, messaging, watching videos or sending pictures, it must be possible via any platform – CRM, SCMs and even enterprise and non-enterprise social collaboration tools such as Facebook and YouTube – the list goes on and will continue to do so. Whichever service they choose, the user expects to have the same experience delivered.

So in the future world of the new Personal Cloud (PC) era, we can expect the symptom of the device to evolve into 'BYOX' where X signifies any application or network access of your choice. Enter the new era of the Personal Cloud.

The architecture to support this delivery must be built by an Application Fluent Network strategy that is user-centric, not device-centric. And it must be able to deliver applications, data and services to any user in the most appropriate and secure fashion, understanding the device the person is employing at the time, as well as the type of application he is using, to then provide him with appropriate connectivity. In order to achieve this, the Application Fluent Network (AFN) architecture must offer three key attributes: a resilient architecture, streamlined operations and automatic control, three key capabilities that enable and shape the user experience.

The new generation of applications and services are already evolving to this new PC era. For example, our OpenTouch-based UC solutions for example, provide business users with multimedia collaborative conversations experience through simple, intuitive and contextual application through any device they choose.

So enter the new PC Era, which improves workflow and user productivity to new levels. The AFN architecture lowers operational costs, therefore providing a higher Return on Investment (ROI) and overall transformed user experience irrespective of their choice of device.