By Ashley Caputo, TMCnet Web Editor

The modern day office relies heavily on mobility, and with the BYOD trend gaining momentum, it has become a common practice for businesses to integrate their employees personal mobile devices into their corporate infrastructure. However, with all of the technologies and apps available users can actually take every function of an office and dump it right into their iPhone (News - Alert) or iPad, essentially replacing the need for a physical workplace.

Here’s how:

First off, a business now has the ability to synchronize their office numbers and their mobile phones with VoIP services from companies like Phone.com, which offers a Mobile Office app. Users can log into their office phones though that app and use their virtual office extension line where they can listen to voicemails, check their call log and even connect to a conference call.

Users can also use the VoIP service on their mobile phones to send and receive faxes that need to be signed; for those that need to be printed the mobile device can connect to a printer via Bluetooth. All of these functions eliminate the need for a business phone system or a fax machine.

Next up is the cloud, which basically takes all of the solutions and software a business needs to function and moves it to the Web in order to be accessed with a mobile device. There is no need for physical updates for programs either, as the cloud automatically updates it for you. Further, one of the largest energy consumers and burdens a large office has is the server, which the cloud eliminates the need for.

Simple programs like Microsoft Word and more complex ones like Adobe (News - Alert) Muse CC can be purchased from the Apple Store in its original form or one that is similar. There are apps for users to annotate their documents, for lawyers to store their client information, for medical offices to track their schedules on, for developers to create mock-ups of website interfaces, for individual users to track their expenses and the list goes on. (Recently, TMC’s CEO, Rich Tehrani (News - Alert), uncovered his top five favorite business apps for the iPad which included the Wall Street Journal, Boingo, Dropbox (News - Alert), Goodreader and Waze.)

So, for those who didn’t quite believe that it was possible leverage a single, handheld device to complete professional business operations efficiently (and inexpensively), the innovations of the virtual office is all the evidence that is needed to support this statement. As for the future, it seems that offices may become smaller and smaller and more people will be working remotely.