Bring your own device (BYOD) has enamoured many organisations. It has introduced several positive forces into the enterprise with the supposed promise of cost savings, employee satisfaction, and productivity.

Benjamin Robbins is spending the next year working solely from a single mobile device. Each week he shares his thoughts and experiences with us on what it means to be mobile-only.

I am spending the next year working solely from a single mobile device. Each week I'll shares my thoughts and experiences with you on what it means to be mobile-only.

This week, Google announced the acquisition of Quickoffice.  For those who don’t know, Quickoffice is arguably one of the better office productivity suites currently available for mobile platforms (also check out OfficeSuite 6 by MobiSystems). Quickoffice allows users to view, create, and edit Microsoft Office compatible Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. Quickoffice is available cross-platform on Android, iOS, and Symbian.

My good friend, Brian Katz, posted a spirited piece yesterday regarding the redundancy of the idea of a mobile ecosystem. Katz writes that the goal isn’t to build a mobile ecosystem, “The goal is to get your mobile devices to play in the enterprise ecosystem that has been there the whole time.”

I want you to first imagine you just moved to New York City. It’s big, it’s bustling, it’s happening. Yet, as one of the pricier places to live in the United States, space is at a premium. Finding a place to live is a challenge and when you do it is never cheap. People learn to make do with less space. So it will come as no surprise that New York has some of the smallest apartments in the US.

My mobile productivity dream may soon be a reality. I don’t want to have a desktop at the office, a laptop for client presentations, and a mobile device for when I am out and about. I want a single mobile device that I take everywhere and sync with productivity peripherals (read monitors, keyboard, and mouse) when required. As well, there is more than enough processing power in our smartphones for everyday tasks such as email, web browsing, and document creation. My desire is to be able to do all of this wirelessly. That isn’t quite ready today – but MHL is.  To pull this off using MHL there is one cable involved – but there is actual a silver lining in there. But before we get into that what in the world is MHL?

Do you prefer the functionality of your PC, but always wanted the novelty of owning your own Macbook? It seems that you are now able to merge both. I caught up with Kim Johnston, VP of Marketing for Parallels Desktop at CITE. Parallels has a virtualisation technology that allows users the ability to run a virtualised Windows PC (and others platforms such as Linux) on the Mac OS.

Who is the top dog of mobile devices? One day it is Apple, the next Android. It will probably be Windows Phone tomorrow (ok that may be pushing it but you get my point).  There is value in understanding this data. However, from the perspective of BYOD, if we are looking at device metrics, then we are concentrating on the wrong data and not doing a good job of measuring value of enterprise mobility.