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Last week Stacey Higginbotham wrote on GigaOm about how CISCO Chairman and CEO, John Chambers, sees an end to the idea of business machines. She was quoting him from Cisco's third quarter earning conference call.

I carry the same two devices in my business life and my personal life. A PDA and my Flip. Another key takeaway is to understand [that] in my opinion, the argument about consumer devices and business devices, as well as the two architectures completely blurring, is over. The real question is how do the CIOs in the enterprise business facilitate this change, and that is from a number of recent meetings with some of the top CIOs in the world. They get it. They understand the change and how they facilitate it rather than slow it down.

Essentially, he is arguing that the days of carrying two devices are over and we are increasingly seeing more and more people using the same device for both personal and business purposes.

In fact, this is one of my favorite themes too. It is my opinion that Cloud Computing, in general, and SaaS, in particular, will accelerate this transformation. With the emergence of new breed of smartphones and blackberries in the market, the mobile devices are getting used beyond the traditional usage patterns. People are using it more and more for web browsing, chat, social networking, voip, productivity apps, etc.. We are clearly seeing a new shift in the way people use mobile devices. They are not just the communications devices any more. They are the personal computers equivalent for the users.

As more and more enterprises move towards SaaS, the only entry point for their users will be the (mobile) browser. In fact, as the consumer SaaS market matures and enterprise SaaS adoption takes place in full vigor, the users will be trained to use the browser as the only entry point for all their computational needs. When this happens, having a separate device for both the personal and business use becomes completely redundant. Users will prefer to carry just one device to manage all their needs. In fact, this transformation might turn out to be a boon for the businesses struggling to cut IT costs. It will not only help them cut costs but also make it easy for their users. SaaS will play a predominant role in this convergence and we are already seeing it happen in the case of small and medium businesses.