In his recent article “Cloud Results” on Information Week, Charles Babcock explores some of the creative ways in which “the cloud” is being used in businesses today. The article is definitely worth a read if you are interested in the space.

But I thought the most interesting thing was the story of RehabCare and its combination of mobile devices and the cloud. RehabCare is an almost 40 year old supplier of acute care rehabilitation services with over 11,000 therapists in the U.S. As you can imagine, this is a mobile workforce even when they are in the same building . . . they frequently have to move to where the patients are.

RehabCare is on its second mobile application rollout for its therapists and apparently, this time it is a great success. They are using a combination of Apple products to replace their older Palm devices. And this, I think is the key message I took away from the article, RehabCare is on its second mobile rollout.

We know that in technology, our first attempts at something new, often are fraught with risk and (frankly) failure. But the second time an organization attempts something with technology, they often get it right (assuming they have the fortitude to try again after a previous failure.) While most of the experiments with the cloud are in their first attempts, there have been enough mobile experiments over the last 10 years that we can guess that many companies are now on their second mobile attempts. This likely means more successes for businesses in the future. And since I’ve been hoping for more mobile adoption for years, I’m glad to see it coming.