your office no longer stops at
the front door

There was a time when work was a place; people went to work and at the end of the day they left work to go somewhere else. It took many years for laptops and home computers to slowly change that. People figured that if they could load enough data and software on these devices, then they could accomplish the work they had carefully planned for even when they were away from the office. Many of these devices became inseparable from their owners.

Arguably, a more profound shift has occurred more recently. Technological advances in hardware, communication protocols, and application development have made it possible for many types of devices to gain critical-mass access to business data and applications to make them largely interchangeable in the hands of users. A user can start a business task or process using one device at the office and finish it using a completely different device at home or on the road. Users now expect to be able to employ the device that is most convenient for a task at a given time and to be able to gain access to the data and applications they need on demand.