It would have been the beginning of an arduous process that included drafting inadequate original business requirements and technical design documents, circulating them to employees inside the operations groups around the world for comment and review, making revisions, and re-circulating improved documents.

Instead, the IT workers struck upon an idea: With only three clicks (or taps) to launch and set up the newly arrived Cisco Jabber app on their iPads, they created a videoconference and invited a key employee in India to answer some of their questions. In doing so, they no longer needed back-and-forth emails and revisions.

"We went from 10 business days of communication down to an hour," says Mike Fitzgerald, managing director and head of information systems at Eagle Investment Systems, a global technology solutions provider serving the financial services industry. (Fitzgerald was also in the conference room.)

Videoconferencing, instant messaging and collaboration on the iPad is gaining steam as more . Companies have become more comfortable with these emerging methods of communication. They're pouring investments into Wi-Fi upgrades and videoconferencing networking technology from tech giants such as Cisco, IBM and Microsoft.

The new iPad released earlier this year could provide an even greater lift. Its fast 4G LTE connection capability and Retina graphics display, which doubles the iPad 2's resolution, seem to be built for videoconferencing. "High-definition video on the iPad 3 is vivid," Fitzgerald says.