Telefonica, Motorola, Nokia and Quanta have their heads in the cloud

While many people wouldn't have a clue what cloud computing is, the truth is pretty much all broadband surfers already use it. And if the likes of Telefonica, Nokia and Motorola are to be believed, the cloud is only going to get bigger, and better.

'The cloud' describes anything that is hosted on the internet itself, rather than on a user's machine. For example, the biggest cloud-based infrastructure is Amazon Web Services, while the biggest cloud-based platform is probably Google Apps, incorporating Gmail, Google Maps etc.

In a discussion at Barcelona's Mobile World Congress entitled 'The New Device Marketplace' today, Dr Ari Jaaksi (Nokia vice president for Maemo devices), Christy Wyatt (Motorola corporate vice president of software and services product management) and Carlos Melendo (Telefonica Spain director of devices) agreed advances in cloud computing, alongside open source development, would shape the future of mobile broadband devices.

While the panellists backed open source developments such as Linux and Android over the likes of Microsoft's Windows, it was clear the overriding opinion was operating systems within the cloud itself would become more important than those in our laptops and mobile phones.

Handsets and PCs will increasingly become the means by which we access data, systems and services online (via the cloud) rather than being software-heavy beasts as they are now. As Wyatt put it, the amount of operating systems and application platforms will come down, but there will be one standard: the internet.

Earlier, Quanta's vice president of advance technology research, Ted Chang, had spoken about how his company was looking to cloud computing as the next big technological step in broadband.

If a consistent enough bit rate can be reliably achieved, for the most part, less software will be required to reside on our devices as it can be stored in a central hub. Instead, we will plug into various operating systems via broadband as we require them, as millions do via Hotmail, Google Maps etc.

Chang used an interesting analogy, saying at the moment each person carries around their own bottle of water for their own use; one computer, one user; however, the cloud represents the opportunity for all of us to use water from the same source – this way we just carry around an empty cup, filling it when required.

As cloud computing becomes more prominent (we've already seen the launch of Google's Chrome operating system) it will give way to a whole new way of computing, as well as whole new set of problems of course. The networks will really need to be rock solid, or some pretty clever ways of working offline need to be in place.

Also, there is the multitude of different screen sizes, data traffic methods and operating systems logging into the same cloud-based systems that all need to be optimised and seamless. Good luck with that!