Above every other theme at last week's Web 2.0 Summit, and a reliable constant at cloud and CIO events throughout the year has been the subject about the ascent of mobile devices.
Depending on who you talk to, mobile will trump fixed or laptops for in either 2012 or 2014. Apple has managed to completely disrupt the entire mobile phone market, and defined the tablet one. Mobile operators' infrastructure are groaning with the pressure (as are conference facility wi-fi services).
A couple of years ago when we last went through tendering for our mobile phone service, internet access was not deemed important enough to be anything but a value-add. Those were depth of recession times, but it's inconceivable that when we next examine our services we will take the same view.
Mobile access (for such a mobile company) to business applications is also going to become crucial. We have stolen a march on this with Google Apps, but content and business management apps will need similar functionality for the small (touch) screen.
There is a large part of me that feels that this mobile arena will be the one in which big corporate IT will eventually come crashing to the ground. It's not necessarily that CIOs don't get the importance of this stuff… It's more that the old models of delivery and management of tech just can't cope with the flexibility and agility that will be required to keep up.
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