We tend to be canaries-in-a-coal mine here in Silicon Valley as we tend to live the way others will in the near future.

One of those canaries is always working, or at least, always being able to work — we are always on.

This survey, commissioned by Egnyte, a provider of cloud based file servers, questioned 350 people and found:

– Eight in ten small business professionals say they plan to work during the upcoming holiday season and most plan to do so remotely – from their home office, extended family’s/in-law’s house and even from the road.

-Nearly nine out of ten people will work from their smartphones, with iPhones and Androids leading the pack of the most popular devices.

– Three-fourths of people will use document apps most often.

– 82% plan to work during the holidays

– 73% anticipate doing work over Thanksgiving

– 87% will work during the December holidays (Christmas/Hanukah/Kwanza)

– 55% will work on New Year’s Eve/Day

There are many occasions that respondents say they’ll work over the holidays:

– 79% will work when they can get away with it

– 12% on the drive to Grandmother’s house

– 76% will access work data over the holiday season from their personal computer; 89% will work from their smartphones

– 63% predict Apple’s iPhone and iPad will be the biggest winner in the market in 2011; while 34% believe the Android device and tablet will come out on top.

Egnyte has an Android application that provides users the ability to develop, edit, and delete files – and even allows users to share multiple files via links or attachments with a unique expiration feature that can limit link access by date or by the number of clicks. Each time a file is opened, Egnyte creates a local copy on the Android device to ensure that, despite the loss of a network connection, users can continue working on files. It also ensures that all edits will be saved back to the file server.

[Cross-posted at Silicon Valley Watcher]