Get ready, because it is coming. Developers are currently working through the kinks of its third beta, but iOS 6 will be here in the fall and enterprises are starting to take notice.

With roughly 200 new features in iOS6, including Apple’s highly publicized move away from Google Maps, is creating problems for developers who are frantically trying to figure the new world out before iOS6 goes live.

“So many of the developers use some form of GPS and mapping in their system, getting familiar with the Apple way of doing things is kind of a big deal,” Tom Lounibos said.

Lounibos is the CEO of SOASTA, a test automation company that is focused heavily in mobile app development. SOASTA’s new TouchTest platform, which allows for test automation on a large number of devices and accounts for new user interfaces like Jester, is designed to increase the availability of mobile test. He cited an IDC report that stated 80% of testing is done manually in mobile, mainly because there are so many different devices.

“Most of our customers have had to do manual testing, and they’re getting to the point where there are too many points of failure to keep up with,” he said.

From his perspective, the 6.3 beta of iOS is looking to be more stable than previous releases and the new features, especially the visualization and mapping ones, have developers in his circle excited.

“The user experience is changing. You used to have one-dimensional cool stuff like maps. Now instead of looking at a map while you’re driving, you can talk to Siri about that map,” he said, adding that he thinks this is just the beginning. He cited machine-to-machine interfaces as a rapidly changing segment that will forever alter the application world.

He also speculated that a world where applications are no longer tied to devices is soon at hand. He envisions things as futuristic as map applications popping up on car windows as being within reach.

“We’re just at the beginning of some enormous changes in the way people will interact with applications,” he said.

Lounibos had some other thoughts on the mobile app world and the issues facing it.

On Windows’ entry into mobile

“The question mark has been out there and with RIM being in whatever limbo they have been in, it’s caused a big opening for someone else to come in and be number three.”

“I think Microsoft is making some good news. I think Windows has a big following and a big developer community already in place; I think the tablet announcement has been big.”

APIs and the companies putting them out

“A lot of brand names where you would say ‘Are they still in business?’–all of sudden you see their API strategy. You’re going to see a lot of old-school brands jumping the shark.”

On cloud computing

“I really believe cloud computing is a byproduct of mobile, and not the other way around.”

Lounibos’ predictions

• The mobile development market, meaning build/test/deploy/manage or mobile PaaS, is looking to be a $100 billion market.
•  Believes that mobile apps will hit 2 million by the end of the year, up from an estimated 800,000 apps currently.
•  Predicts that the most growth in mobile apps will be in enterprise mobile because “they jumped in late.

– Adam Riglian, @AdamRiglian

Day one of the OpenStack Conference got off to a flyer of a start with a pair of keynotes both provocative and enlightening.

First to the mic was Chris Kemp, OpenStack co-founder and co-founder and CEO of Nebula. His points were simple – OpenStack is a stack, not a product. He pounded on that theme throughout his keynote.

To that end, he explained that the idea of OpenStack is that of a cloud ecosystem designed to be an open space for partners to collaborate.

Kemp argued against a recent report from Gartner analyst Lydia Leong, stating that he did not think that OpenStack competed with VMware or Amazon Web Services. After his speech, he repeated the point in a tweet, saying “Today’s #OpenStack, VMWare, & AWS ecosystems are (and should be) complimentary – each are optimized for different applications”

In his speech, he said that VMware was solving a very different problem than OpenStack. Kemp said that VMware has done a good job taking 25 years of legacy software and making it run in a static environment.

“Enterprise applications don’t like agile and dynamic. They are designed to be static,” Kemp said.

He added that while Amazon’s implementation was innovative, that the steps it took into cloud computing were “evolutionary, not revolutionary.”

Following Kemp was Zorawar “Biri” Singh, senior vice president and general manager of HP Cloud Services. Singh gave an overview of HP’s cloud strategy, discussed its partners and announced that public beta would begin on May 10.

Singh said that HP was active in OpenStack’s project policy board and that the company was open and ready to learn from its consumers.

He spoke on the “paramount” importance of APIs in a world where communicating between clouds will become critical and said that HP was coming from a point of view that, “standing up VMs” is a “2009 phenomenon.”

I was able to sit down with Singh for a one-on-one after his keynote and will have more on HP later.

Stay tuned and be sure to follow me on Twitter @AdamRiglian.

Hewlett-Packard is repositioning itself in the cloud market today with the announcement of a series of improvements, upgrades and new products under its Converged Cloud banner.

If the move is anything, it’s comprehensive. HP makes it clear that it’s trying to accommodate all comers into the cloud market and is willing to guide them through any cloud implementation — public, private or hybrid. Initial reactions from some analysts suggest HP is late to the party when it comes to cloud and that this move represents another attempt to close the gap with competitors.

“HP is playing catch-up regarding its overall cloud strategies and solutions, including its new Service Virtualization 2.0 and private cloud management capabilities, and how it is working with partners to build private clouds for its customers,” said Jeff Kaplan, managing director of Wellesley, Mass., consultancy THINKstrategies.

Service Virtualization 2.0 is the most crucial component of the new package for developers. With it, HP has created a testing environment for developers that allows them to test from the get-go, a system upgrade that accounts for the real need for agility in most enterprises.

“It fundamentally provides the glue necessary for development teams to create their own clouds,” said Matt Morgan, senior director of product marketing for applications at HP. “You can re-establish business as usual for a software development shop. They can build a plan that lets them test on day one.”

Morgan touted 25 new features in Service Virtualization 2.0, with some of the highlights being a full RST stack, XML protocol capability, protocol stacks with multiple end points, Ajax, the ability to classify response times to change response rates, server management capability and a new user interface.

He also cited new application lifecycle intelligence technology as a key selling point for developers. Through one platform, developers can perform ALM tasks while engaging others using new social collaboration tools, which include new dashboards and mobile and tablet apps.

“At the end of the day, everything is about agility, and the social collaboration is just a facilitated agility,” Morgan said.

– Adam Riglian

In a society driven by technology, one aspect of American life has elected to stay in the past – voting.

DemocracyLive, an Issaquah, Wash.-based technology firm, is using cloud computing to change that by making ballots more accessible – especially for disabled and military voters.

DemocracyLive offers an online service called LiveBallot that gives voters access to an interactive ballot that allows them to hear directly from candidates. Users rolling over a candidate’s name on the online ballot will be able to see and hear messages, delivered by the candidates, and view other information about them.

“The content is typically drawn from the candidates themselves,” DemocracyLive CEO Bryan Finney said.  “The candidate is speaking directly to the voter about why they’re running and what they’ll do.”

Finney is quick to note that LiveBallot is just information, not tabulation. No voting is done online, but the ballot can be printed out and mailed in as an absentee in some states.

LiveBallot was recently used in the Florida primary, enabling 1,200 votes to come in from disabled, military and overseas populations. It is also being used in California and Virginia among others, and it is available to all states that choose to use it.

Two years ago, Finney led a migration of DemocracyLive into the cloud, choosing Windows Azure.

“The value of that has really been a combination of both technological and from a business development perspective,” Finney said. “The Microsoft cloud has the ability to scale and the proven stability and security that are so important in this environment of elections.”

Finney said scalability was critical in elections. He said his servers will often go months with no activity and then see an immediate spike around elections. He said he went with Microsoft over competitors because they are more proven in the government space and because they have representatives in every state capital.

He added that the move to the cloud saved DemocracyLive an estimated 50% on its IT budget, crucial because it is funded by taxpayer dollars through a grant with the Department of Defense and the Department of Health and Human Services.

While he believes that America is not currently ready, “politically or technologically,” for online voting, Finney hopes that DemocracyLive will grow to fill that role over time.

“I think over time, the Facebook generation of voters will demand another paradigm when it comes to accessing their ballot,” he said.

– By Adam Riglian