Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

March 11, 2009

Survey: Midsize U.S. Cities Support Remote Working

By Raju Shanbhag

TMCnet Contributor

Microsoft, in a survey of workers conducted by 7th Sense LP, reports that although employers, managers and co-workers in 25 midsize U.S. cities support remote working, adoption is slow.

While employees prefer to work from the comforts of their homes, avoiding traffic and other problems, employers prefer remote working as it saves a lot of energy and transportation costs for the company.

According to the survey, although most employers support remote working, just 40 percent have a formal policy regarding that. One of the major reasons for this is the increase in public demand for more environmentally sustainable business practices. The other reasons are the recently introduced security improvements, such as laptop computers equipped with the Windows Vista operating system’s BitLocker Drive Encryption.

“Strategic use of a remote work force and supporting technologies can be a competitive game-changer in this down economy, especially for small and midsize businesses that have historically trailed large enterprise companies in adopting remote working practices,” said Michael Park, corporate vice president of the U.S. Small and Midmarket Solutions & Partners Group at Microsoft (News - Alert).

Allowing IT departments to better support remote workers, Microsoft offers Network Access Protection included in Windows Server 2008. Unified communications technologies now enable teleworkers to communicate and collaborate in the context they prefer.

According to the survey, compared with all 25 cities polled for the survey, Buffalo, N.Y., had a statistically significantly higher number of companies with remote-working policies (68 percent). When it comes to employees, 77.3 percent of people reported that gas prices increased their desire to work from home, says the survey.

Recently, as TMCnet reported, Microsoft partnered with Lenovo to provide the Ultimate Academic Personal Computer promotion that will include high-powered, highly functional, affordable laptop PCs for students, teachers and the educational staff. Both the companies have introduced a wide range of high end laptops which are preloaded with various Microsoft applications and yet come at an affordable price for students.

Don’t forget to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users.

Raju Shanbhag is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Raju’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Michael Dinan

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