What Is Mobile Collaboration? Business and IT Glossary

Mobile collaboration—the legacy term for what we now call team collaboration—combines cross-platform synchronous and asynchronous interaction modes with elements of collaboration infrastructure. These elements may be mobile-first or mobile-optimized but must at least be mobile-friendly.

Mobile collaboration includes point-to-point and group chat/IM, audio and video, and screen/file sharing, backed up by presence, social group, and community services like activity streams, news feeds, profiles, and expertise location.

Mobile collaboration is a necessity to support the needs of the increasingly mobile workforce. Applications like Slack and WhatsApp (owned by Facebook) have democratized the communication paradigm, challenging unified communications (UC) and telecom providers alike. Mobile messaging and collaboration apps also threaten the revenue model of telecom providers. Most providers have made deliberate investments in an effort to stem this tide.