With mobile collaboration gaining traction this year, Forrester Research Inc. recently gave a rundown of the top vendors in this emerging sector.

California- based company, Box, tops Forrester’s list along with other 12 mobile collaboration vendors that qualified through Forrester’s 15-criteria evaluation. The 13 vendors are ranked based on their commitment to tablets and smartphone platforms and developing a mobile strategy that aligns with the needs of the mobile workforce which includes low latency, cloud reach and platform support.

Along with Box, Forrester mentioned Adobe, Cisco, IBM, salesforce.com, SugarSync, Skype, and Yammer as leaders of the mobile collaboration sector. Forrester also mentioned AT&T, Citrix, Dropbox, Evernote, and Google as strong performers.

Box has been rapidly improving this year with an increase of 600% in mobile customer implementations compared to all of 2010. Box’ mobile solution saves a company over 300,000 hours a month which attracted companies like Pandora, TaylorMade, Clear Channel and Six Flags.

Services Angle

With the cloud and mobile technology advancements, it makes possible for people to work and collaborate without the restraints of location. According to Forrester, work, collaboration and mobility are three main elements which make up mobile collaboration.

Forrester says that mobile collaboration requires a new approach.

“We now live and always will live in a multi-device world, where companies and consumers choose different smartphone and tablet platforms and expect to get apps on all of them. This means that companies need vendors that already support the most important mobile platforms: iOS, Android, and RIM, as well as Windows and Macintosh computers and the common browsers.”

Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box, nicely sums up the future of mobile collaboration.

“The demand for mobile productivity is greatly accelerating enterprises’ transition from locked down legacy solutions to cloud platforms, driven by rampant adoption of mobile devices from end users and IT departments alike,” said Aaron Levie. “We believe the future of enterprise mobility won’t be owned by any one platform — rather, enterprises will need to enable secure content sharing and collaboration on a range of devices, and we’re investing aggressively in making sure that Box is the #1 cross-platform solution in this category.”