By Alice Straight, TMCnet Web Editor

The editorial staff of Inc. magazine failed to show up in the office during the month of February.

The entire staff, for the entire month.

It was a group project for the benefit of articles in the April edition, which hits newsstands April 6, looking at the rise of the virtual office. Senior writer Max Chafkin wrote the articles for the cover piece “The Office Is Dead. Long Live the Office.”

During the month the staff used available technology, including VOiP technology and instant messaging, and only once did the entire staff gather – and even that was out of the office and in the home of Jane Berentson, Inc.’s editor.

Not all businesses are taking the virtual office to the extent that Inc. magazine did, but there is a rising demand for shared work space.

Those spaces include meeting and conference areas, reception desks, and shared support services. At American Executive Centers, which owns seven facilities that provide virtual office services in the Philadelphia area, the virtual office clients now outnumber the conventional tenants.

As part of the Inc. project, Kate Lister of the Telework Research Network, a San Diego -- based research firm, estimated that if 40 percent of the work force, approximately everyone who could work from home, did so 50 percent of the time, American businesses could save an estimated $700 billion.