As the world embraces mobile technology, so does its work force, and it makes sense that businesses would want to embrace mobile, too. According to a recent poll, that is exactly what they are going to do.

The survey was conducted by the Gaithersburg, Md.-based voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) application company, BroadSoft. The results reveal a notable, if not entirely surprising, trend.

Of the 400 information technology (IT) decision-makers (200 in the United States and 200 in the United Kingdom) who were surveyed, 82 percent manage enterprises that already have employees who currently use mobile applications for communications and collaboration.

While companies have not migrated exclusively to mobile technology, a sizable number employ at least some staff members who have. According to the survey, 44 percent of enterprises have at least one quarter of their work force operating solely using a mobile device. One-quarter of the respondents also believe desk phones will be replaced by mobile phones within two years.

The migration to mobile poses a unique set of priorities and opportunities for IT decision-makers. Already a third or more of their enterprises support tablets, Blackberrys, iPhones and/or Android devices. These numbers shouldn’t surprise anyone who has recently flown business class.

More importantly, the survey reveals that IT leaders are building on that mobile behavior to expand the capability of their companies to communicate through various channels and on different platforms. Specifically, the survey shows 62 percent of IT leaders are expanding their enterprise’s unified communications capabilities. Within that objective, instant messaging, web collaboration and videoconferencing were identified as the top services they are looking to support in the next three years. Videoconferencing, in particular, is very popular, with 72 percent of U.S. IT decision-makers (56 percent in the United Kingdom) looking to deploy video-conferencing across their organization in the next year.