Virtual Office Resource

Sometimes a movement comes along that drives fundamental changes in technology, and mobile workers are rapidly proving—if such haven't already proven—to be one of these great movements. Indeed, technology itself is changing to suit the needs of the mobile workforce, and a new report suggests there three main ways that's taking place.

A survey recently completed by Regus sets the stage, as 84 percent of respondents noted having used at least one tool specifically geared toward working remotely just in the month preceding the response. What's more, a similar number—85 percent—believe that remote workers are possibly the biggest driving force behind the rise of cloud-based technologies, offering up the means to access necessary tools regardless of location. With 66 percent of respondents in a PGi study reporting that telecommuting is viewed positively in the respondents' company, it's clear this is a growing field.

That rise in turn is driving several key components of the market, particularly the “anytime, anywhere” access that allows remote workers access to critical systems, whether at home or abroad, and without regard to the device being used for access either. The office may be desktops only, but the mobile workforce will turn to smartphones or anything else to get the job done.

The increased number of cloud-based applications for the Web also makes sense here; hardware only goes so far without software, and there are already starting to be issues of performance and the like stepping in. Almost half—45 percent—of respondents in a recent study noted that “increasing network complexity” was the biggest network management challenge around. Worse, over 50 percent of respondents noting that, when an app goes down, it can take a day or even longer to actually recover and get back to work.

Finally, there's the always-present issue of security. Security used to be comparatively simple, since most everyone was in the building. But with people outside of the building now not only able but also required to access sensitive company data and accompanying systems, security needed to be ramped up and made more effective. But if it were too effective, it would get in the way, and render the whole mobile workforce concept meaningless. Thus things like the virtual private network (VPN) were created to help drive this generation of mobile workers.

That's far from the only advance put forth for the mobile workforce; the mobile workforce required what amounted to a virtual office, with all that entailed. The basics were well in hand; tools like the Microsoft (News - Alert) Office suite moved readily into mobile, and the ability to make a document from the office became easy to translate to the home office and beyond. Services like phone.com stepped in to help provide communications that didn't specifically require a phone line; offering up a variety of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) tools that remote workers could use to communicate from the virtual offices being used. This in turn gave rise to new jobs that could be done remotely, as companies like phone.com offered user extensions and call routing options that allowed even call center employees to work remotely.

There are plenty more options available these days than ever before, and indeed, work is increasingly less about a place one goes and more about a thing one does. The tools are also changing to match this, and it's all thanks to the mobile workforce and its need for virtual office space.