In the past decade, mobile computing has gone from a niche market for well-heeled enterprises with large field organisations to the fastest growing, and often most popular, way for employees of organisations of all sizes to do business computing. The near-universal adoption of mobile devices by consumers—who are also employees—has forced one of the most major shifts that corporate IT has ever seen.

In many cases, expensive company-owned laptop rollouts have been replaced by leveraging phones and tablets that are owned by employees. Business applications are quickly being rewritten, and new ones are being invented that leverage the power and ubiquitous nature of mobile devices.

Mobile computing is no longer just another way to access the corporate network: it is quickly becoming not only a new computing platform, but the dominant computing platform for many enterprises. Along the way, corporate culture has had to change to accommodate the always-present nature of the modern smartphone, and security practices have been completely rethought to deal with the challenge of alien, uncontrolled devices being brought inside the corporate firewall.

Mobile computing used to mean modems, laptops, and Blackberries

There was a time when companies could pretend that mobile was some sort of fad, or that it didn't apply to them. Perhaps they were in "high-touch" businesses, and phone calls were the only accepted way to contact customers. Or maybe they thought they had well-defined markets and stable competitors, so 24-hour access to key employees was not an issue. For many companies mobile computing used to mean that all the MBAs carried HP-12C calculators, and engineers had their own version. Early attempts at true mobile computers like the GRiDPad, Eo, and Apple Newton were hampered by inadequate processor power and very little in the way of connectivity.

However, once e-mail reached critical mass in the late 1990s, the market opportunity drove a relatively-unknown Canadian company, RIM, to put together a connectivity solution for mobile professionals that leveraged IBM's extensive ARDIS radio network. Billed as an "interactive pager" the Blackberry 850 (released in 1999) featured e-mail, calendar, and contact management—all synchronised with your corporate server, using enterprise-grade security. For the small annoyance of a monthly fee, employees could be corporate citizens anytime and anywhere.

As the CTO for a high-tech company at the time, I was one of the first users of the Blackberry 850; it’s not hyperbolic to say it’s still one of the most life-changing gadgets I’ve ever used. Suddenly I could stay in touch literally anywhere in the country—even on trains or riding in a car. No more needing to find a phone line to plug in my laptop, or call the office to see if there were messages. Given the limitations of the small form factor, the thumb keyboard and high-contrast monochrome screen worked remarkably well. It was all powered by an easy-to-replace AA battery, too.

The rest of the industry struggled to adapt their existing PDAs—like the popular but expensive Compaq iPaq, and the innovative PalmPilot—to the new need for constant connectivity. Palm and Compaq both introduced bulky communications add-ons for their devices, and many Windows CE units like the Dell Axim supported adding a wireless card. But none caught on the way the Blackberry and its successors did. As a result, the mobile computing market remained fairly calm until the introduction of the iPhone in 2007.

The smartphone changed everything

Ironically, given the changes it brought about, the original iPhone wasn't a very good phone, and it certainly wasn't targeted at corporations. It was designed to—and did—make waves among consumers, but many thought it wouldn't matter to businesses. Microsoft, the titan of business software, dismissed it as irrelevant, continuing its push to put Windows on tiny devices with little pens for their menus, and often featuring Blackberry-like keyboards.

In reality, business use of mobile devices has taken off faster than any other computing market in history. HP's Mobility Business GM Pierre Mirlesse, in an interview with Ars, estimated that "there are 1.3 billion workers already mobilised using some form of laptop, tablet or phone."

What most of the industry and its pundits had underestimated was the impact that consumers have as employees. They wanted the same easy-to-use iPhone interface that they were using for their personal messaging and mail for when they were conducting business. Mirlesse explained that some of this is generational. Younger workers expect to be able to do work from their mobile devices. As this reality dawned on other major industry players, they began to respond with their own new or revamped mobile computing initiatives.

Google was the first off the mark—perhaps aided by CEO Eric Schmidt's position on the Apple board while plans for the iPhone were made. Already a cloud-based services titan, it sensed that mobile would be the future, and that if it lost control of the end-user to Apple it could be boxed out of its lifeblood services revenue. Earlier, Google had purchased Android (the company), but didn't announce Android (the OS) as a product until November 2007—ten months after the iPhone was unveiled. Android-based handsets started to become available in 2008.

Early versions of Android had plenty of teething pains, but Google's development resources and Android's free price point have contributed to it becoming the highest-volume—but not the most-profitable—mobile OS worldwide.

Microsoft tried various approaches to respond to the iPhone, famously beginning with Steve Ballmer making fun of the fact that the iPhone didn't have a keyboard. Once it became clear that the lack of a keyboard wasn't a deterrent to widespread adoption by business users, Microsoft belatedly began working on a touch-based version of Windows for phones as part of its erstwhile "Windows Everywhere" strategy.

Unfortunately, even though it was Microsoft's third or fourth attempt at a mobile version of Windows, Windows Phone didn't offer enough compelling features to attract either a critical mass of app developers or users; they were growing more committed to iOS and Android by the day, and thus harder to budge. It took some serious panic, and the firing of Windows leader Stephen Sinofsky, before Microsoft started to pivot to a "devices and services company"—a motto that new CEO Satya Nadella has since tweaked to be "cloud-first, mobile-first."

Windows PC OEMs are still hoping they can make the Windows Everywhere strategy work, however. Mirlesse, for example, sees Windows 10 as providing the unified experience of device and application management that corporations need for mobile rollouts. “I don’t think Android or iOS is going away, but I think there’s a clear thrust for Windows 10 because it does provide that integration capability and the extra security layer,” he added.

While the economic impact of universal mobile access has been massive, we shouldn't ignore the social and cultural implications. Raman Khanna, former Stanford University CIO turned corporate venture investor, told Ars that the biggest changes he’s seen brought on by mobile computing revolve around corporate culture. “Employees at many companies—and their bosses—are now expected to be available at any time and any place. Texts get returned evenings, weekends, and even on vacation.”

On one hand, that can help employees take time away from work to be at family events. At the same time, it means that you might be painstakingly tapping away responses to business messages, rather than actually being at the event. The industry isn’t quite sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, though some companies are clearly against it: back in 2012, in an attempt to retain a modicum of work-life balance, Volkswagen decided to stop forwarding e-mails to employee Blackberry devices outside of office hours.