Business and enterprise software, and other applications that help a business run

In the future, with business computing hardware shrunk to shirt-pocket size and most of the heavy lifting done in the clouds, what will business communications be like? For one thing, they will be a lot simpler. All of us will be able to make and receive telephone calls, send and receive documents and emails, read and update Web and social media sites, and network like never before, all from anywhere we need to be, or from home.

Unless you choose to be, you will never need to be out of touch with customers, co-workers, business contacts, or friends. You will easily be able to collaboratively edit documents during a phone conference with international co-workers, all from poolside or from you breakfast nook. You will be able to connect with everyone you know, simply and via multiple methods, whenever you want to.

The new computing devices and applications will allow you to be connected like never before, with a freedom never before known to information workers. Take a call from Brussels, send the resulting spreadsheet to Akron, video a recap to your boss, and use a social media site to figure out where to meet colleagues for lunch, all on the same device, seamlessly.

This may cause some privacy and over-connectedness issues, so we will also need status messages that actually mean something. You should be able to classify your contacts and show an appropriate status message to each group or person, one which is enforced by your system, and perhaps with a personalized avatar, programmed by you. If we do not have these safeguards, of course, we could easily be overwhelmed by all of the possible connections.

But, assuming we can control privacy issues, think of the boon in efficiency. You will always have everything you need at your fingertips: your files, your telephone, your music, your videos, your business associates, your friends, and your family. This communications paradigm will go a long ways towards streamlining the way you live and work, while continuing to blur the lines between the two.