Introduction to the Cloud - Beginning iOS Cloud and Database Development - page 12

We live in the second decade of the 21 st -century. It feels appropriate that we have reached our
capacity for making bigger hard drives and computers. They are becoming less and less common.
Instead, companies such as Amazon have started to create server farms where it can keep adding
servers or clouds, as companies require their services. At the same time, mobile devices are
becoming faster, cheaper, and smaller. Consumption from these devices is increasing dramatically
with more and more data being sent across all our mobile devices or desktops daily. Especially
within businesses, this is becoming more critical every day. The trend appears to be moving toward
online and cloud services because it makes sense with the world in which we now live. We are trying
to make cheaper, faster, smaller devices that don't hold a lot of data, but still have an enormous
capacity for data consumption and processes that are much faster than the processors that we carry
around in our pockets. Even our latest smartphone is faster than a desktop computer from 10 years
ago. It has become more and more evident that we need services that store large amounts of data
but also give us access to it quickly.

Table 2-1 shows the top ten applications and the amount of usage compared to others. Five of the
ten are data-driven applications. The other five are applications for downloading from these and
other sites.

Table 2-1. Mobile streaming data comparison (Source: Sandvine Network Demographics)

Upstream Downstream Aggregate

Rank Application Share Application Share Application Share

1 Facebook 15.43% YouTube 30.97% YouTube 28.03%

2 HTTP 13.60% HTTP 14.37% HTTP 14.28%

3 SSL 13.26% SSL 8.92% SSL 9.49%

4 YouTube 7.91% MPEG 8.90% Facebook 7.95%

5 Google Talk 2.23% Facebook 6.83% MPEG 7.93%

6 MPEG 1.92% Pandora Radio 5.15% Pandora Radio 4.74%

7 Pandora Radio 1.90% Google Play 3.27% Google Play 2.96%

8 Skype 1.56% Netflix 2.69% Netflix 2.42%

9 SMTP 1.52% iTunes 1.46% iTunes 1.34%

10 Yahoo! Mail 1.49% Flash Video 1.18% Flash Video 1.05%

Top 10 60.82% Top 10 83.74% Top 10 80.19%

In Table 2-2 , you see the trend is the same for all fixed access or desktop users.