Although it may come from Microsoft and have the name Office, the rumored Office Mobile for iOS and Android will face an increasingly aggressive and functional crop of competitors. 

Gmail and Chrome crashed at the same time, but it's not clear if the outages were related.

Android and iOS dominate the smartphone market, but not for long, executives said during a Mobile Breakfast meeting Tuesday. But their choice for a viable third contender may surprise you.

Smartphone vendors will rely on upgrades such as full-HD screens and more powerful yet more frugal processors to entice customers to buy new phones in 2013. Those tactics may work: Processor designer ARM thinks sales will surpass 1 billion units for the first time. But competition will continue to be ruthless as vendors and platforms fight for dominance or just survival.

Gesture-operated computing is here today in the consumer world with products like Microsoft Kinect and The Leap. Two experts say that similar gesture technologies could someday become an important part of computing in the enterprise.

Corralling all the cloud services (personal and business) that employees use with a single ID and password is a security and management challenge. Rather than looking outside your network, Centrify makes it easy to use Active Directory for cloud, app, mobile device, and computer account management. 

The rise of highly mobile computers like smartphones and small screen tablets has created a much bigger addressable market for enterprise software than existed five years ago. Box, a cloud-based file-sharing and collaboration service, is riding this wave.

Research In Motion is offering free phones and server upgrades to IT managers to get them interested in BlackBerry 10. It's a reasonable step, but it ignores the BYOD trend and shine a spotlight on RIM's uncomfortable position in the market.

SharePoint is a great example of the schizophrenic approach to democratizing IT -- it's easy enough for a manager to use to create document libraries, yet every version adds new features for the IT team to get all those SharePoint instances back under official control. The development options in SharePoint 2013, especially in SharePoint Online, reflect this perfectly. But they also offer the hope of peaceful coexistence.

Mobile app security in the enterprise often follows a predictable growth model, but companies are often being forced to grow up faster than they would like.

The vision of BlackBerry 10 is to create a single platform that's great for both work and personal use. Better late than never? Watch this video then decide.

Apple finally adds track changes support to iWork for iOS devices along with other multi-platform compatibility features, but doesn't quite match the business feature set of other Office-style apps.

Citrix is buying Zenprise and plans to release a product that includes both mobile device and mobile app management.

Ignition from LogMeIn gives users some serious remote access functionality. It's also got a serious price tag, but it's comparable to competitors.