Case study: Web-hosted ‘workspace’

Valerie Helmbreck — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:28:30 +0000

We have a group of road warriors who rarely make it into the office.
When they needed to hand in reports to their manager or share a file, they had to send it through e-mail.
This setup often made it hard for the group to organize their work, and even harder for them to collaborate with each other.
I tried creating folders for them on a network server and giving them VPN access, but the connection was slow and there was always a problem.
I figured with all the Internet could do, maybe there was a Web-based solution that could help.
We used Microsoft Office for most of our documentation, so I did some research on sites that could host our Office files online.
I found out Microsoft has its own service that hosts Office files on the Web. And it was free.
I signed my road warriors up for Office Live Workspace, which allows them to work on documents, securely save them to their own “workspace,” and access them online from any computer anywhere.
They can also give other members of their group permission to read files or make changes.
It’s made their lives so much easier, and I was able to get rid of the costly, issue-prone VPN.
(Alex Borsh, IT manager, Polymeright, Inc., Fremont, CA)

What will telecommuting cost your company really?

Valerie Helmbreck — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:41:28 +0000

The boom in telecommuting’s being driven by soaring gas prices and a sinking economy, and now there’s data that’s showing just how big an impact the practice is having.

A new survey finds that companies wind up winning on two fronts: Productivity and cost containment. More than half of those surveyed cited both increased productivity among offsite workers and lower costs as benefits from the practice.

A new survey of 212 IT managers and CIOs in a wide range of industries by CompTIA research tells the telecommuting tale:

The majority of respondents (78%) report that some employees within their organizations telecommute, at least part-time.
Most organizations don’t have a high percentage of full-time telecommuting employees. Most organizations (82%) say that less than 25% of employees telecommute full-time.
Workers in IT management (41%), field technical support (37%), and administration (35%) most commonly telecommute (part-time or full-time).
Top benefits of telecommuting to organizations include improved productivity (67%), cost savings (59%), access to more qualified staff (39%), employee retention (37%), and improved employee health (25%).
Significant challenges of telecommuting to organizations include securing corporate information systems (53%), limiting use of unauthorized and unsupported devices (38%), and controlling personal use of corporate mobile assets (33%).
To meet challenges of telecommuting, IT departments have tackled issues such as upgrades in network circuits and VPN equipment, expanded security, training, and implementation of new virtualization technologies and applications.

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Case study: Web-hosted ‘workspace’

What will telecommuting cost your company really?