The thin line between life and work has been eroded further, now that Big Blue is taking to the airwaves. On Friday, IBM Corp. announced a software and services push, Mobility@Work, to bring all the applications and business capabilities of the PC to mobile devices for use anywhere and at any time. And it’s set its cap for the handset bigwigs: Mobility@Work will be compatible with the Apple iPhone in the fourth quarter and is meanwhile available for BlackBerries, Windows Mobile devices and Symbian-based smartphones.
The idea is to turn phones into pocket computers that can remotely access any office functionality in full-featured fashion that happens to be out there, the company said. While one could argue that the iPhone and other smartphones already are indeed mini computers, this is different.
Rather than relying on apps hosted in the carrier network (getting that to work correctly can be SUCH a drag) or on the phone itself (hello, memory drain), IBM is taking advantage of recent advances in cloud computing. Using an iPhone, BlackBerry, smartphone or laptop, users can reach into the cloud for resources as they need them. It also changes the revenue model: cloud computing allows users and companies to pay for and use the services and storage as they make use of them.
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