There is significant application mobilization afoot within large enterprises for the remainder of this year. The plans may be fueled, in part, by sophisticated mobile software-as-a-service (SaaS) availability - offerings that increasingly bundle device management and security into the mix.

Large companies primarily plan to take collaborative applications mobile in the very near term, according to recent research by Compass Intelligence. The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based researcher recently polled 209 IT decision makers in large enterprises about their plans to implement mobile applications in the second half of 2008. Collaborative applications with shared calendar and contacts topped the list (38%) followed by group or company instant messaging and SMS, or short message service (31%).

CRM (26%) and other core business applications (23%) were next in line for deployment. Workforce management (19%), sales force automation (18%) and asset tracking (18%) also made a healthy showing for rolling out this year.

Mobilization plans may be heating up, in part, because there are “lots of different approaches to mobilizing existing applications,” observes Kitty Weldon, principal analyst for enterprise mobility at research firm Current Analysis.

One is that the “ASP [application service provider] model is coming back into vogue,” offering mobile SaaS as an option, she notes.

Mobile SaaS generally constitutes client software for the mobile handset (hosted, delivered and maintained by the SaaS provider), as well as adapter software to connect the handset to back-end resources. In addition, mobile middleware, hosted by the SaaS provider, manages the applications and message flows.

Mobile middleware is getting smarter. “What historically hasn’t been possible until recently is for users with small handsets to look at CRM data and also get information from a completely separate inventory system,” explains Benjamin Wesson, VP of product management at Dexterra, a five-year-old maker of mobile middleware that integrates data from back-end systems for handset-toting users.

“On a mobile display, you don’t have multiple views or the ability to replicate every bit of data with a 64BM memory capacity,” as is possible with a PC display, he adds.

Joanie Wexler is an independent networking technology writer/editor in Silicon Valley.