Syncing Mobile Applications with Cloud Storage Services

Abstract

Cloud data storage is an option available almost on any mobile platform. Nowadays, there are multiple solutions for syncing data in mobile applications. The aim of the paper is to analyze mobile application developers ' possibilities for syncing content using major free cloud storage providers. The paper describes the cloud computing in mobile context and highlights cloud providers APIs. Experimental residis are analyzed in order to identify the best cloud storage solution for syncing mobile applications, depending on the operating system on which they are implemented.Keywords: Cloud Computing, Mobile Application, Data Synchronization, Application Programming Interface, REST, OAuth1 IntroductionWe are living in the era of agile and always-available data storage [1], where it is very important to have instant and permanently access to the data, personal and private, with which we are operating at work or at home. The development of mobile technologies and the spectacular growth of mobile devices users created this opportunity to quickly read our emails, to view our documents from shared folders, to access all the data saved in the cloud directly from the personal smart-phone or tablet.The mobile devices that we are taking with us every day represents mobile clients for our cloud storage subscriptions that we have to main providers, such as Dropbox, SkyDrive, Google Drive, Box, and so on. It is very important to have the same or a similar user experience on each mobile device, independently by the operating system.The choice of a certain cloud storage provider (CSP) depends on the facilities provided, the user experience and the storage amount space that he offers. Some mobile operators provides also cloud storage solutions, such as Orange Cloud, which allow to store your digital content, secure in the cloud, available anytime and anywhere [8].Figure 1 presents the storage and backup settings for iCloud solution, which is integrated in every iOS operating system. Apple provides by default a 5 GB free storage plan for every iOS user.The paper is structured in five sections, as follows. The section Cloud Computing in Mobile Context describes the main types of cloud computing facilities and their advantages when they are used in mobile environments.Section Comparative Analysis analyzes experimental results and findings for main cloud providers on the market, such as Dropbox, SkyDrive and Box, in the mobile context.Section Cloud providers API presents all related information to use cloud providers APIs in order to develop mobile applications, on different operating systems, which can store their data in the cloud.The paper ends with Conclusion and future work section that summarize important research results of this analysis and identifies future development possibilities.2 Cloud Computing in Mobile ContextBecause many hardware and software manufacturers have invested a lot in cloud computing solutions, the evolution of public and private cloud has increased in terms of users, security, infrastructure and data storage, [14], In few years we will assist at the moment when a user will go at work or at home with the same tablet that will be docked in a keyboard and will access all the data from the cloud. The desktop computers will disappear slowly and will be replaced with simple monitors or mobile tablets that will use the desktop virtualization technology. When data storage in the cloud will be cheaper, companies will replace all the hardware equipment with these simple monitors in order to use platform as a service (PaaS), software as a service (SaaS), storage as a service (STaaS), security as a service (SECaaS), data as a service (DaaS), database as a service (DBaaS) or test environment as a service (TEaaS) [2],Figure 2 below presents the cloud computing architecture integrating all related cloud solutions.In [1] is presented a set of challenging storage issues for researchers and engineers. …