A primary goal of cloud computing is to reduce the cost of computing resources, while increasing system flexibility and scaling. It offers such physical resources as processors and storage as online resources that can be accessed much like a utility (the electric company for example). Cloud solutions typically utilize some form of computer clustering to achieve this provision of resources, which can be granularly assigned to customers on demand. For individual users, some of the benefits take the form of applications anytime, anywhere Wi-Fi and LTE connectivity. Now users can look for Watson APIs.
AT&T this week released Watson APIs (application programming interfaces) so developers can add voice recognition, text-to-speech and voice-based search features into mobile applications. It enables the use of voice commands not only for control, but also transcription, translation or voice-based search in the cloud. With Watson, AT&T wants to make speech and natural language processing an integral part of how users interact with smartphones.
AT&T's goal is to help customers achieve more on mobile devices through cloud services tied to the network and through bandwidth. When it comes to companies, hosting applications in a cloud environment means a company’s computing infrastructure is treated as a utility service. Since there is no need to purchase hardware, such concerns as computing capacity, bandwidth and storage are no longer issues.
For example, if a company purchases a physical server for its computer needs, it is limited to the capacity of that server, and must pay for its continual usage, even during off-hours and evenings when it may not be necessary. For individual users, delivering cloud services with low latency is an ongoing challenge, and AT&T is using a combination of technologies to make wiser use of available spectrum. Some include using software techniques for congestion management and placing antennas in selective places for wider reach.
According to chief technology officer Krish Prabhu, “When we use cloud services it's not just the throughput, it's very low latency, then I think the big frontier is going to be the next-generation of devices, but also the next air interface, something beyond LTE. I do believe you will see something on that front over the next five years.”
An improvement could also come with the possible follow-up to LTE called LTE-Advanced, which is generally viewed as a
software-only upgrade. But the industry is looking forward to the next air interface that will succeed LTE, and research for that standard is ongoing, Prabhu said.
Edited by
Jennifer Russell 
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