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Business mobility is on the rise as SMBs and enterprises move towards a mobile workforce to enable a more productive and efficient environment.  

Besides utilizing a smartphone for work, the best device professional can use for business mobility is a tablet. Mitel (News - Alert), a provider of unified communications (UC) software solutions announced extension of its enterprise grade unified communications capabilities to the recently launched Blackberry PlayBook tablet.

Mitel Unified Communicator (UC) Advanced from Mitel is a unified communications client which helps integrate mobile clients across multiple platforms with business communication system delivering presence and availability through secure instant messaging, audio conferencing and web and video collaboration with the call control capabilities. It also addresses the growing need of Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) trend in which workers request bringing their personal mobile device into the workplace.

This extension to BlackBerry PlayBook enables a consistent, rich, end-user communication and collaboration experience by providing remote access to corporate communications capabilities such as managing presence, viewing corporate contacts, call history, and voice mail details. It also allows BlackBerry Smartphone users to initiate phone calls directly on the BlackBerry PlayBook without interrupting their work flow by leveraging the Wi-Fi or cellular network.

As the smartphone OS space heats up and the battle for supremacy becomes fiercer, senior analyst Stela Bokun from Pyramid research appears to think that by 2015, Windows Phone will establish itself as leader.

According to Pyramid Research, although Android (News - Alert) is experiencing a momentum, unlikely to be stemmed for at least a couple of years, the Nokia-Microsoft combination could prove to be a setback for Android's growth. The full effect of the powerful combine will be felt by the end of 2013, when WP was projected to surge forward ahead of Android. Pyramid Research believes that although WP hasn't really taken off as Microsoft would have wished, Nokia's (News - Alert) (News - Alert) alliance could actually prove to be beneficial to WP's growth. Projections state with the alliance many obstacles that are stunting WP's growth would be removed.

ClickSoftware (News - Alert) Technologies, a provider of automated workforce management and optimization solutions, announced that it is going to launch the ClickAppStore for mobile business applications which will include hundreds of ready-to-use mobile business apps, and a unique integrated development environment (IDE).

ClickSoftware asserted that the IDE will simplify the IT professionals’ job to assemble business apps into end-user solutions via no-coding drag and drop wizards. The store is stated to offer means to create user interfaces that are effectively device agnostic and enable its applications to run on just about any tablet or smart-phone. The company asserted that the launch of the ClickAppStore is a natural extension of the growing number of system integrators and clients’ IT staff that have joined its own teams in using ClickAppStore tools to adapt, configure, or extend the 'out-of-the-box' functionality of the ClickSoftware’s own mobility products.

Bookmark and stayed tuned to the Business Mobility community, exclusively on TMCnet, to stay up-to-date on the latest news in how SMBs and enterprises are moving to a mobile workforce.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.