The market place is quickly being populated by products providing varying levels of Smart phone control and management for the Enterprise customer (e.g. MobileIron, Air-Watch). The standard packages include application bundling, expense monitoring and data management, and more recently the goal of permitting personal device use i.e 'run what you brung' OR bring your own BYO (re: Citrix)

The gains to enterprise seem clear but can the small to medium sized business benefit from such a service? Until now we've seen a small number of providers tending to focus on particular operating systems only (e.g. JAMF Software for iOS devices). The question we're asking is whether it's cost effective to deploy these newer Enterprise level systems for the SMB market. Clearly, there isn't the mobile provider 'lock in' as the SMB may not necessarily need new mobile devices, so no 2 year contracts. The saving is by avoiding new mobile device agreements, the close monitoring of business-relevant call charges and the security gains for existing devices. These all seem compelling reasons to deploy such a service.

With respect to cost savings, there is no argument the SMB can gain from the new analytical data layer. However, currently these systems remain prohibitively expensive to purchase and license. The SMB may also prove reluctant to adopt such a system based on the security argument. Many now regulary use faceless cloud data and back up services seeming to demonstrate a 'we don't care' attitude to data security.

There is no doubt these products will be pitched at the SMB market. Most of the mobile network providers are putting together management systems with their hosted offerings (i.e. Vodafone OneNet) including independent cloud hosting firms such as EVAK Technologies offering a cloud based MobileIron solution. Whether the SMB will accept that they can increase control and cut costs by engaging these Phone management system, and then go on to purchase remains to be seen.

Currently, we're a heavy user of the Daylite Business Management system from MarketCircle. This works very well and seems worth the wait (12 months). Evernote, we're all using and the more recent integration with other applications are welcomed (i.e. OfficeDrop, SAPStreamWork, Grumi etc).

SkyGrid and Pulse are both my favourites as the applications hub my key subject commentators and keep me up to date with industry trends. I'd also include TweetDeck or the Twitter app in this group, but I personally find TweetDeck irritating in some functions (i.e. the ability to Follow individuals!).

For News, BBC iPlayer still rules. I'd like to see SkyNews in the iPad format as the iPhone version is a poor substitute.

With respect to work and my own productivity, OfficeHD, Filemaker and PDF Reader have all proved very useful. We heavily use VPN over wireless back to our own hosting and the apps detailed work pretty well under those network conditions.

We've tried and keep trying the many VNC applications and general support/diagnostic utilities but in the 'Service and Support' environment we operate, a laptop wins every time. We will keep trying though.

For personal use, the Video, Web surfing, Music and reading functions remain second to none and I am one of the millions of users who fits the 25% of iPad use in bed.

Finally, when I need to work or I the need the kids to calm down by watching a film, the iPad fits the bill.

It was just over 3 years ago when my colleague, Ray Kingdon, explained to me the concept of Virtualisation (Virtualization to those 'over the pond') and the work he was project managing for numerous UK banks. When he explained under-utilisation, reduced energy footprint, disaster recovery gains and one machine replacing 100, I was sold. In fact, my mind was exploding with the possibilities of what this could mean. While there is clearly no question of the gains virtualisation offers to enterprise and datacentre environments, can the same technology truly deliver the comparable gains to the Small to Medium-sized Businesses (SMB) market? Most importantly, can the general SMB be bothered, especially with the current economic environment.

We're convinced the gains are there. From a server perspective SMB may have up to 10 servers but more than likely 2 to 3. Virtualising these individual servers down to the single machine almost irrespective of platform, has proven cost effective with excellent gains in resource use and disaster recovery implications. It's becoming easier and less costly to achieve, with significant vendors now in the mix. From a desktop perspective, earlier versions of Virtualisation enabled simultaneous operating systems to function, if not a little shakily. They did work though. From our perspective this meant businesses looking to depart from the PC platform could still keep a toe in. Earlier versions of VMware and Parallels have now been replaced by stronger, easier and more integral versions.

The possibilities continue to grow, from the Mac-based business wishing to run a SAGE Accountancy network (Windows only) up to the financial institution consolidating thousands of server instances. In fact, some commentators are questioning where it will all end. How many virtual machines can you realistically operate and maintain? Welcome, the virtual server farms or elastic compute clouds. It's big and it's happening. As with change, it's a commitment and belief in both the gains for the business and the concrete technological gains the new concepts can bring to the table.