Article from http://www.powerhomebiz.com/News/052009/virtual-store.htm 

May 20, 2009 ( PowerHomeBiz ) - San Jose, CA  - Usually, if a company shuts its doors forever it’s a bad thing. When ShapiraMedia CEO Isaac Shapira closed his trendy headquarters (complete with all the “dot-com trimmings”), it was actually a sign of prosperity and productivity to come. Isaac is joining thousands of other small businesses in making the transformational leap from traditional “brick and mortar” office and retail space - a move that is paying off huge. He is able to do that by using a business collaboration and communication suite that empowers him to present, meet, and collaborate with customers, partners, and co-workers anywhere in the world. His office is now at home, and anywhere else he roams to with his laptop.

Isaac evaluated a number of solutions that were tested by the Web Conferencing Council (www.webconferencingcouncil.com), and ended up selecting the same product that won the council’s best of class award (VIA3 from www.viack.com) – mostly due to the affordability and richness of features.  Brainstorming sessions, sales calls, PowerPoint webinars, file sharing, Audio and Video meetings, and instant communications are all at his fingertips now, making his small company act and look like a much larger entity.  The best part is the cost savings; instead of paying $3,750.00 a month for office space, furniture rentals, food and supplies, etc… he now pays around $200 a month.  For this 200$, Isaac has enough product licenses to give 10 employees full functionality of the web conferencing suite. His up front cost was zero, because his employees were already using laptops with built-in web cameras and microphones.

And here’s more good news; his customers love it. 

First, they love the convenience of meeting and collaborating online.  ”We used to make sure that all customer experiences with ShapiraMedia were off the charts productive, creative, and enjoyable for customers,” said Isaac. ”They were drinking espressos, seated in colorful beanbags, with hip music like ‘Kings of Leon’ resonating in the background.  The one downside to the meetings, however, was the need for travel back and forth to facilitate in-person face-to-face interaction.  That meant an unproductive element to their day, which we can now avoid by conducting these meetings online.”  

Secondly, because of the tremendous savings Isaac incurred in his overhead, he is now able to pass those savings along to the customers.  This results in ultra-competitive bids that are winning them a steady stream of new business.  Neil Woodruff, Viack CEO, said this is a common story with VIA3 users.  “The quick productivity and cost saving infusion that happened at ShapiraMedia is something our user base enjoys consistently, and immediately.  Because of VIA3’s ease of use, affordability, and near-zero investment costs, businesses are able to turn on a dime from brick and mortar to online powerhouses”. 

There are a number of other collaboration features above and beyond straight meetings that help ShapiraMedia.  Creative projects are stored, shared, and collaborated on through the included Workspaces.  All employees are a click away from each other using Instant Messaging with presence awareness.  They brainstorm over images in the included Whiteboard feature.  They utilize the included voting and polling feature during company meetings.  They are also able to share desktop control with each other for an even higher level of collaboration.

The only thing missing? 

“VIA3 doesn’t handle espressos”, laughs Isaac.  “As for the colorful beanbags - those are still being used.  You can see them in the background during online meetings with ShapiraMedia.  Some things will never change.”

Carl Weinschenk has some great insight into the growth of telepresence:

The movement of a service from scenarios in which they are owned by the business using them to managed offerings, in which an outside service provider is involved, is a familiar migration in IT and telecommunications. It has happened to greater or lesser degrees in security, VoIP and other sectors. It now is happening in telepresence, which is teleconferencing done in such a way as to make it seem that the separated parties actually are in the same room.

The reasons are obvious: The client gains great advantages in cost and the outsiders, solely dedicated to one or a narrow group of applications, do a better job of staying up to date. Telepresence, which ABI Research says will generate $360 million in revenue in 2011, seems particularly well positioned for managed packaging. It is a complex field and the gear is very expensive. Indeed, in this era in which politicians routinely throw around dollar figures in the trillions, a mere $360 million sounds like it could be an underestimate. In any case, big companies will have services maintained by the outsiders within their offices, while small- and medium-size businesses will be able to take advantages of facilities at hotels, conference centers and similar venues.

Whether the infrastructure is owned by the end user or a service provider, innovation continues. This week, Polycom expanded its offerings. The Polycom RealPresence Experience and Polycom Telepresence Experience now offer Single Touch Multipoint, which the company’s release says enables easy call initiation between multiple locations. Polycom, in an effort to accommodate companies that want to partially outsource, now offers Assisted Operation Service. The idea is that the end users team will manage many functions, but a Polycom service provider partner will provide monitoring, and streamline fault management.

Organizations with a widely dispersed employee base, naturally, are the best candidates for telepresence. An outsourcing arrangement was announced this week by Cisco, Orange Business Services and one such company, Single Buoy Moorings. The company is a multinational provider of systems and services to the oil and gas industry. It will use Cisco TelePresence system, which will be managed by Orange. Single Buoy has deployed the Cisco TelePresence System 3000 in Houston, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Monaco and Schiedam, Netherlands. Orange is providing project management, consultancy services, deployment, network services and operational management, according to the release.

The beauty of videoconferencing and telepresence was evident well before the swine flu pandemic. The beauty of not being there — which is healthier, cheaper and more efficient — clearly has a future as a managed service.   For users not wanting a full VTC system and the related hardware issues, they should use the software version of teleworking, which is Web Conferencing.  To view the Top Ten Report on Web Conferencing solutions, click HERE.

Great info from Ben Bain, FCW:

The Obama administration today advised agencies to increase federal telework by standardizing their telework policies, having telework managing officers and creating appeals processes for employees whose requests to telecommute are denied.

John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), today announced his governmentwide plan to increase the number of federal employees who telecommute. Berry said the plan was based on legislation that had been proposed to enhance federal telework.

Telework advocates say increasing the number of federal employees that regularly telecommute will reduce pollution, traffic congestion, improve employees’ quality of life and improve the government’s ability to operate in a crisis. Berry said concerns over the spread of swine flu emphasize the importance of telework.

“We hope and we pray that this does not become a full pandemic,” Berry said at a news conference. “But if it does, this is one of those things — telework could be one of the most important options that the federal government will have to maintain continuity of operations in the event of a crisis.”

OPM’s plan would:

• Convene an advisory group of telework program managers to help formulate standards for telework policies.
• Have OPM review agencies’ telework policies and help them meet standards.
• Encourage each agency to have a telework managing officer position to oversee the application of telework policy.
• Encourage agencies to have a transparent process through which employees can appeal denied telework requests. 
• Ensure adequate training for employees and managers.

Berry said the advisory group would help develop metrics to measure the program’s success and determine the specific goals for participation in the program. Berry said the plan would move telework from the “nice to have” to the “must have” category.

He also said President Barack Obama and the cabinet secretaries were behind increasing the number of federal employees who telework, and he didn’t think compliance with the new plan would be a problem. Berry said he didn’t expect that the administration would have to make elements of the plan mandatory, and he expected agencies to “step up,” adding “if they don’t, we’ll deal with it.”

“This is something the president cares about,” Berry said. “This is something that affects continuity of operations for our government and I don’t think we’re going to have an issue of noncompliance.”

Reps. John Sarbanes (D-Md.), Gerald Connolly (D-Va.) and Jim Moran (D-Va.), who have supported legislation to increase federal telework, supported the plan during the news conference.

Sarbanes, who introduced legislation in March to increase federal teleworking, said he was happy that the administration’s plan included the key elements of that bill.

“I’m excited at the prospect of this becoming a new culture within the federal workforce,” Sarbanes said.

However, Sarbanes added, “We’ll probably press forward to get the legislation in place just to codify these standards so that going forward the less enlightened have something that they need to adhere to.”

The “swine flu” (influenza A H1N1) outbreak that was first identified in San Diego, CA, but was then traced by Canadian scientists to its roots in Mexico, claimed its first victim Monday when a Mexican toddler died in a Texas hospital.

While not yet at pandemic levels, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) declared Sunday a national public health emergency. With cases officially reported in seven countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) raised the level of influenza pandemic alert from Phase 3 to Phase 4 on Monday. The number of affected countries has since risen to ten. The elevation of alert level indicates that the outbreak has moved from predominantly animal infections with few human infections to sustained human-to-human transmission. According to the WHO’s Web site, Phase 4 “indicates a significant increase in risk of a pandemic, but does not necessarily mean that a pandemic is a forgone conclusion.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which had reported 91 U.S. cases of swine flu infection as of this morning, recommends six things people can do to prevent the spread of the disease. The first two items on the list are “avoid close contact” and “stay home when you are sick.” For those with the ability to work remotely, teleworking could be an essential tool in preventing the spread of the disease. Should the disease reach pandemic levels, teleworking could also become the safest way to keep essential government and other crucial services running.

In a joint press conference held Wednesday morning by the HHS, the NIH (National Institutes for Health), and the CDC, Dr. Richard Bresser, the acting Director of the CDC said that we are in a pre-pandemic period and that communities should be focusing on planning for possible school closures. The CDC has recommended that schools close when an effected student has been identified.

With some schools already closed in New York, the state worst hit by H1N1 thus far, the possibility of parents being unable to make it to work, either for lack of child care or for fear of further transmission, is a real concern.

“At the start of an outbreak, you don’t know what the course will look like. It could fizzle out in a few weeks or become more or less virulent,” said Dr. Bresser. “We have been undertaking as a global and national community intensive planning in the event that we enter a pandemic. We are asking people at the state and local levels or faith-based communities to look at the planning they’ve undertaken and move forward, so that if this were to develop into something more severe, they would know what they are going to do…We are being aggressive and forward leaning and adjusting our strategy and approach.”
With a trial vaccine still months away, a large part of community planning necessarily includes containment. It makes sense that this should include creating or updating telework policies for those in both private and public sectors.

In a memo dated Sunday, John Berry, Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) advised the heads of all government executive departments and agencies “to review previous preparations for the potential for absenteeism of Federal employees or contractors due to illness and the ability to care for sick family members or for children if schools/day care centers should close. Based on our pandemic influenza work, we know that in the most extreme circumstance, we could encounter fear of going to work, need for social distancing, and disruption of agency operations.”

Today, Berry announced an official plan to increase telework among federal employees. According to OPM, only five percent of the nation’s 1.9 million federal employees telecommute. The new plan would “substantially increase” that number.

In a statement today the OPM said, “While promoting the general efficiency of operations, viable telework programs have long been suggested as an important feature of agency Continuity of Operations (COOP) Plans, as they can be implemented in short order during a national health or weather emergency.”

In addition to the health and safety advantages, Berry cited environmental benefits and increased productivity due to improved employee morale.

“I’m here to put some giddy-yap into telework,” said Berry. “I was raised in the D.C. metropolitan area, so I know a little something about the traffic congestion that frustrates commuters and saps them of energy even before they get to the office. With a sensible approach to creating model telework programs, thousands more employees will work from home one or two days each week on a regular basis—and thousands fewer will be on the road. Gone will be the anxieties of commuting for these folks, and they will ‘show up for work’ refreshed and ready to go. Taxpayers will benefit; and with less commuting time, employees will have additional quality hours to spend with their families and friends, or to pursue outside interests.”

The components of Berry’s plan are drawn from two bills which have been introduced in Congress: H.R. 1722, the “Telework Improvements Act of 2009,” introduced by Representative John Sarbanes (MD), and co-sponsored by Representatives Gerald Connolly (VA), Danny Davis (IL), Stephen Lynch (MA), Tom Moran (VA), C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (MD), and Frank Wolf (VA); and, the “Telework Enhancement Act of 2009″ (S.707), introduced by Senator Daniel Akaka and co-sponsored by Senator George Voinovich (OH).

The NIH said today that it will be several months at the earliest before a trial version of a swine flu vaccine becomes available, and an indeterminable time after that before it is ready for human use. Given the procedural hoops that must be jumped through to create new agency guidelines for telecommuting, it may be just as long before a significant percentage of federal employees find themselves able to work from home, as well.

Before taking any action, the OPM will first convene an advisory group of telework program managers “to draw on their knowledge and expertise in formulating standards for telework policies.” It will then direct agencies to submit telework policies for review against a set of standards crafted by the advisory group.

Director Berry is also encouraging each agency to establish a new Telework Managing Officer, “who would ensure telework policies are applied fairly and supported by agency managers.”

The right tools for the job:
As workers shift from being entirely office-based to teleworking scenarios, having the right equipment is a major part of the equation. One of the best places to start is our Whitepaper on the Top Ten Vendors for 2009.

Telecommuting, e-commuting, e-work, telework, working at home, or working from home (WFH) is a work structure in which employees enjoy flexibility in working locale and hours. In other words, the daily commute to a normal place of work is replaced by telecommunication. Many work from home, while others, occasionally also referred to as nomad workers or web commuters use mobile telecommunications technology to work from coffee shops or any number of other remote, disparate locations.

Telework is a broader term, referring to substituting telecommunications for any form of work-related travel, thereby eliminating the distance restrictions of telecommuting. All telecommuters are teleworkers but not all teleworkers are telecommuters. A frequently repeated motto is that “work is something you do, not something you travel to”. A successful telecommuting program requires a management style which is based on results and not on close scrutiny of individual employees. This is referred to as management by objectives as opposed to management by observation.

Long distance telework is facilitated by such tools as virtual private networks, conference calling, videoconferencing, and Voice over IP (VOIP). It can be efficient and useful for companies as it allows staff and workers to communicate over a large distance, saving huge amounts of travel time and cost. As broadband Internet connections become more commonplace, more and more workers have enough bandwidth at home to use these tools to link their home office to their corporate intranet and internal phone networks.

The roots of telecommuting lay in early 1970s technology, linking satellite offices to downtown mainframes by dumb terminals using telephone lines as a network bridge. The massive ongoing decrease in cost and increase in performance and usability of personal computers forged the way to decentralize even further, moving the office to the home. By the early 1980s, these branch offices and home workers were able to connect to the company networks and computers using personal computers and terminal emulation.

The adoption of local area networks promoted sharing of resources, and client server computing allowed for even greater decentralization. Now, telecommuters can carry laptop PCs around which they can use both at the office and at home (and almost anywhere else). The rise of cloud computing technology and Wi-Fi availability has enabled access to remote servers via a combination of portable hardware and software.

Telecommuters are linked to their home office by using groupware, virtual private networks, and similar technologies to collaborate and interact with team members. As the price of VPN-capable routers, high-speed Internet connections to the home, and VOIP technology has plummeted in recent years, the cost to connect a telecommuter to their employer’s intranet and telecommunications system has become negligible when compared with the operating costs of conventional offices as well.

Telecommuting options increase the employability of proximal or circumstantially marginalized groups, such as mothers and fathers with small children, the disabled and people living in remote areas. It can also reduce an individual’s carbon footprint, through minimizing daily commuting. The set up also offers possibilities for increased service and international reach, since telecommuters in different time zones can ensure that a company is virtually open for business around the clock. Telework has also enabled offshore outsourcing. Telecommuting provides employee flexibility, eases the working parent’s burden, increases employee productivity, and reduces absenteeism. Virtual offices allow employers to keep valuable employees, allow employers to hire employees otherwise not available, and have facilitated productive re-engineering of order-management and customer service processes.

Telecommuters need not necessarily work from the home. A more recent extension of telecommuting is distributed work. Distributed work entails the conduct of organizational tasks in places that extend beyond the confines of traditional offices. It can refer to organizational arrangements that permit or require workers to perform work more effectively at any appropriate location, such as their homes and customers’ sites - through the application of information and communication technology. An example is financial planners who meet clients during lunchtime with access to various financial planning tools and offerings on their mobile computers, or publishing executives who recommend and place orders for the latest book offerings to libraries and university professors, among others.

These work arrangements are likely to become more popular with current trends towards greater customization of services and virtual organizing. Distributed work offers great potential for firms to reduce costs, enhance competitive advantage and agility, access a greater variety of scarce talents, and improve employee flexibility, effectiveness and productivity. It has gained in popularity in the West, particularly in Europe. While increasing in importance, distributed work has not yet gained widespread acceptance in Asia.

Virtual offices are attractive to management because they reduce overheads, reduce office space needs, increase productivity, and reduce staff turnover. However, managers (whose roles are varied and not well defined) in telecommuting roles typically receive fewer promotions due to the lack of direct contact they need. From that aspect, telecommuting seems to work best for professionals such as engineers.

DRAWBACKS:

Telecommuting has come to be viewed by some as more a “complement rather than a substitute for work in the workplace”. Thus, some workers may find their work load increased to the point where they are under more stress than before. Distractions at home can have a similar effect, especially among workers who leave the office to be better able to care for small children and the infirm.

Fellow employees in the employer’s office sometimes resent home telecommuters.

A telecommuter may lack the sense of loyalty to the company that he or she would have if working at an office.

Employees who work by telecommuting can lose space in their homes, possibly even suffering the cost of converting a room into an office.

Telecommuters need to be more adept at using their equipment as they have less access to a dedicated employee at the company whose job is to maintain that equipment.

Even when a company successfully implements telecommuting practices, increasing productivity and decreasing stress, they face an increased risk of confidential data loss and risks to data integrity resulting from the increased geographical diversity of their network and the loss of direct corporate control over the telecommuter’s physical work environment.

Initially, managers may view the teleworker as experiencing a drop in productivity during the first few months. This drop occurs as “the employee, his peers, and the manager adjust to the new work regimen”. The drop could also be accountable to inadequate office setup. Managers need to be patient and let the teleworker adapt. It can be claimed that as much as “70 minutes of each day in a regular office are wasted by interruptions, yakking around the photocopier, and other distractions”. Eventually, productivity of the teleworker will climb.

Management needs to recognize the communication barriers that telecommuters experience. The feeling of alienation can be very difficult for the teleworker. The job should be clearly defined as well as its objectives. Performance measures should be thorough and apparent.

Managers need to be aware that although overhead decreases, the cost of technology becomes greater. Information Technology (IT) managers experience greater demands because of user requirements for remote access through laptops, personal digital assistants, and home computers. Use of non-standard software can create problems. Setting up security and virtual private networks increase the demands for IT.

Telecommuters can experience a loss of social community with coworkers and must be able to overcome feelings of isolation. Although this can be done by finding a social life away from the company work environment, it precludes the ability to develop close connections with those that share the common experience of the company, job, departments, and functions they may perform.

Traditional line managers are accustomed to managing by observation and not necessarily by results. This causes a serious obstacle in organizations attempting to adopt telecommuting. Liability and workers’ compensation can become serious issues as well. Companies considering telecommuting should be sure to check on local legal issues, union issues, and zoning laws. Telecommuting should incorporate training and development that includes evaluation, simulation programs, team meetings, written materials, and forums. Information sharing should be considered synchronous in a virtual office and building processes to handle conflicts should be developed. Operational and administrative support should be redesigned to support the virtual office environment. Facilities need to be coordinated properly in order to support the virtual office and technical support should be coordinated properly. The conclusion for managers working within telecommuting organizations is that new approaches to “evaluating, educating, organizing, and informing workers” should be adopted.

Out of sight, out of mind… Teleworking can negatively affect a person’s career. A recent survey of 1,300 executives from 71 countries indicated that respondents believe that people who telework were less likely to get promoted. Companies rarely promote people into leadership roles who haven’t been consistently seen and measured.

For information on what services to choose for Telecommuting, you can start by viewing the Top 10 Vendor list for 2009.

Every company understands that work-life balance is a great motivating factor for ensuring employee loyalty and retention. Initiatives like flexible timing, creative leave options and teleworking are emerging as VERY popular trends. In the past teleworking was regarded as a perk but today many organisations consider it as a necessity. It is a preferred option for both employers and employees. Teleworking can be described as the practice of establishing, developing and maintaining successful off-site business practices through telecommunication. Current workplace trends are promoting more flexibility for employees and tailoring jobs to fit individual needs. The image of the traditional workplace where employees walk-in into a work area is being replaced with associates working wherever they can be most efficient and productive, whether at home or anywhere outside office. The availability of affordable technology has also been a major contributors to ‘any time, any place’ telecommuting trend.

Telecommuting is a work option that has steadily gained in popularity and commands a strong position as a viable alternative in the IT business world. Telecommuting is intended to provide a better quality of life for associates and promote enhance job performance.

The availability of more affordable technology has enabled companies to adopt telecommuting as an alternative work arrangement. A tight job market, fierce competition for talent and a record high turnover among the IT workforce are several reasons why many organisations see teleworking as a benefit to entice new recruits. Another factor fuelling the teleworking trend is the high price of commercial real estate. Instead of leasing new office space or expanding existing office buildings, it is considerably less expensive to provide associates with notebooks and phone lines to work from the convenience of their own homes. Ranajoy Punja, vice-president, marketing, Cisco Systems India, says, “Increasingly, there is a lot of pressure on IT organisations to improve productivity and the need to quickly react to market requirements.

Teleworking is not entirely replacing the office environment, instead it is increasing in certain key IT segments such as call centres, customer support and telemarketing, where the workforce for whatever reasons cannot work in office full-time.

For employees teleworking has its obvious advantages leading to increased productivity, more autonomy, greater lifestyle flexibility, reduced stress, work satisfaction, motivation and no wastage of time commuting to the workplace. Teleworking also provides easier work conditions for workers with disabilities. On the other hand, employers can benefit from teleworking as it allows a reduction in  overhead costs, increases labour productivity, which means higher profits and provides additional recruitment and retention options due to a larger, talented labour pool. Telecommuting also reduces business disruptions due to emergencies such as floods, power outages, strikes and illnesses.

There are several problems associated with teleworking, namely time management and team coordination with co-workers and managers. Isolation is another drawback as teleworkers at home may miss the camaraderie and support of co-workers. Without formal structure that the workplace provides, it may be difficult for telecommuters to work efficiently. Teleworking can also lead to burnout or overwork as telecommuting gives 24- hour access to work and workaholics may work in excess. This mode of work is vulnerable to household distractions and hence there can be blurred boundaries between work and family, which might interfere with a teleworker’s productivity. In certain cases teleworkers may worry that their reduced visibility will limit their potential for advancement due to isolation, the potential for longer work hours and diminished access to resources in the workplace.

On the other hand, one biggest obstacle for employers is the issue of control. Because monitoring performance is more difficult for those working at home, managers often do not recognise the contributions made by teleworkers by way of good performance reviews and promotions.

Teleworkers are often not provided clear performance goals by their managers, who sometimes mistake useful work with physical presence.

Successful teleworking comprises four main elements — the right work, the right associate, the right supervisor and the right top management support.

From Mary Mosquera, who says it best:  Telework isn’t as widespread in the federal government as it should be, a government improvement group said. The lack of widespread adoption of telework is part of the general management and performance challenges at many agencies, said Max Stier, president and chief executive officer of the Partnership for Public Service.

If senior officials don’t have a true sense of what their objectives are and how to set and measure them, telework won’t happen, Stier said at an event sponsored by the Telework Exchange on April 8.

Telework requires more agency managers with the additional skills necessary to oversee employees who work away from government facilities, he added. Those managers must be able to effectively communicate the agency’s objectives so employees can mesh their goals with those of the agency, Stier said.

“If you can’t provide the answer without having them in front of you, telework won’t work. Having employees sitting at their desk isn’t a goal,” Stier said. Agencies need to invest more in training for managers to learn techniques for managing remote workers effectively, he added.

“This is about effective government,” Stier said. “Telework itself is not the end goal.”

The National Institutes of Health has 3,300 teleworkers, defined as employees who spend at least one day a week working from another location, but the agency has the technological capacity for 10,000 teleworkers, said Jack Jones, NIH’s chief information officer and director of its Center for Information Technology.

NIH has many more employees who perform some of their duties remotely, he added.

“It’s more about mobility,” Jones said, adding that NIH has 9,000 employees who use BlackBerrys and iPhones.

Thomas Boyce, deputy CIO at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said telework is an important aspect of recruiting and retaining top talent. Some managers might think that teleworking is unnecessary because more people are applying to work for the government during the economic downturn. However, “even in a difficult economy, telework is a way to attract the best,” he said.

Boyce is a member of an NRC committee that’s studying work-life balance, and telework is part of that. NRC is considering a pilot program in which a group of employees could take care of family duties during part of the day and perform work activities at home in the evening, he said.

Funding telework and the technology infrastructure it requires is problematic for agencies, Boyce said. He recommended that telework funding be part of disaster recovery and continuity-of-operations planning.

Jones said the forces that are driving telework also include:

• The ability to gain more productivity from employees.
• A tool for emergency preparedness.
• Public law and agency policy.

Green IT is a hot issue in IT. It has been calculated that the IT equipment deployed worldwide accounts for about the same amount of CO² emissions as international air traffic.

In the years ahead, a product’s green credentials will be a key criterion in the buying decision of the enterprise, not only because energy costs will continue to rise, but also in view of ethical and moral considerations. The time to ‘go green’ is now. Telecommunications must also do its part in conserving resources. 

Looking at the bigger picture of today’s energy resource consumption, three key factors stand out. Firstly, the electrical power and energy requirements of communications systems such as telephone systems, voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) switches, end devices, and unified communications solutions. Secondly, CO² emissions and resource consumption associated with producing, shipping, and disposing of communications systems. And finally, potential energy savings and a smaller CO² footprint enabled by the smarter use of enterprise communications.

Raymond Padayachee, Chief Executive Officer at Siemens Enterprise Communications, says: “Telecommunications has always been an efficiency enhancer, a powerful means of sparing resources. From telegraphy’s inception, telecommunications has vastly reduced the amount of energy expended on transporting people and mail. In the past, phone systems required convection cooling, which is a large consumer of power. The total electrical connected load of phone systems with 1 000 extensions ranged up to 5.4 kilowatts, and their cooling systems consumed at least as much power.” The switch to IP telephony and unified communications will represent the first major change in voice communications since the digital PABX and cellular phone changes in the 1970s and 1980s.

Modern unified communication solutions converge the different communication media and means within enterprises, boosting the productivity and mobility of the workforce and the entire company. More efficient enterprises use energy more efficiently.

“The purpose of an energy-saving green solution goes beyond pacifying decision-makers’ consciences; the enterprise leader is also looking to cut power consumption to drive down operational costs. This is precisely the point at which economics and ecology meet. As a result, market analysts are predicting a resurgence of interest in teleworking,” says Padayachee.

Telework occurs when ICTs are applied to enable work to be done at a distance from the place where the work results are needed, or where the work would conventionally have been done. The International Data Group (IDG), a provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets is predicting that almost 75% of the US workforce will be mobile by the end of 2011. On a global level, more than 122 million employees worldwide are expected to be working from home at least part of the time by 2011.

“The challenge is for organisations to make this movement work for them. As ‘Generation Y’ comes of age, the ability to work flexibly, from home or other locations, will become an expectation rather than a ‘nice to have’. The South African workforce has begun to mirror this trend and the technology to support mobility is already in place with our unified communications solutions offering,” says Padayachee. Unified communications helps businesses address environmental concerns with teleconferencing, videoconferencing, remote collaboration tools that support teleworking, and more. Unified communications as software rather than special purpose hardware frequently requires less energy to deliver the same functionality.

Teleworking will shrink a company’s carbon footprint by reducing travel and energy consumption. ‘Green’ companies that utilise up-to-date ICT technology can experience numerous cost savings and productivity benefits associated with teleworking. These include reducing expensive office space, as fewer permanent desks are needed, attracting and keeping the best talent pool – despite location or salary constraints, being better able to respond to customers outside normal working hours as well as resilience to unforeseen crises such as traffic congestion and remote office locations.

The first step towards embracing a “green” change positively must be to set down a formal strategy for teleworking and conversion to a unified communications platform. Emphasis must be placed on harnessing the latest communications and collaboration technology to enable fully functional working from any location.