Welcome to the Mobile Enterprise. It should come as no surprise – in fact, it seems utterly appropriate – that I’m writing this first blog entry from an altitude of 36,051 feet, travelling at 547 mph, somewhere in the skies above Arizona. This cramped seat in coach will be my office for the next several hours, but it could just as easily be the back seat of a taxi, a hotel lobby, or my living room sofa. The point is: This is how the world conducts business today.

We used to talk about the “road warriors” in our organizations, that elite sect of frequent fliers who spent more time out of the office than in it. Today, we are all road warriors, in a sense. Those who keep 9-to-5 office hours are fast disappearing. For a growing number of us, the “office” is wherever we happen to be: It travels with us, and on those rare occasions that we find ourselves at home – the “office” is there, too.

The primary enabler of this new mobility is nearly ubiquitous wireless connectivity – from downtown Manhattan to the Russian steppes -- and like any other tectonic shift in technology, it is radically shaking things up, from the board room to the control room.

I clearly recall the excitement I felt about my first cell phone. It was incredibly clumsy and costly compared to today’s razor-thin smartphones (in hindsight, my Audiovox handset was closer to Secret Agent Maxwell Smart’s “shoe phone”), but all I could think at the time was, “How liberating!”

A few weeks later, I had the opportunity to visit Hong Kong for the first time, and got another perspective on mobility. As I goggled at the inhabitants of that teeming city from my cab, I was surprised to see a shiny cell phone clamped to the side of nearly every head. “They must be rich!” was my first jet-lagged surmise. Gradually, I realized these masses were not engaged in idle banter with friends and family, they were working, issuing and taking orders nonstop. I was suddenly overwhelmed by an almost Orwellian premonition of how many ways always-on, always-accessible mobile connectivity could change our lives.

So much for my 36,000-foot view of mobility. As IT leaders down here at ground level, the way we adopt and enable mobile communications in our organizations has a tremendous impact on the lives of both internal and external “customers.” There are many tough choices to make, and plenty of consequences for making the wrong choice – or even the right one, but too late. As the community manager for this Hub, I will be setting the stage for what I hope will be an extremely engaging and provocative online discussion about the risks, rewards, and evolving roles of mobile communication in today’s enterprise.

But as with any form of communication, it can’t be a one-sided conversation. I’m counting on you to chime in and let me know if something on this site strikes a chord, or rubs the wrong way. To many, it may still seem like “enterprise mobility” is a niche. I don’t believe that. The fact is mobility IS the enterprise. If you agree, you’re in the right place. If you don’t, stick around. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.