The Modern Workspace

Once in a while, we wish that we would wake up a little later, not rush to shower and get dressed, have a decent breakfast and avoid jumping into the car and dealing with traffic. This may happen most often than not. Considering the amount of time a Kenyan worker wastes on the roads, he or she would be more productive working from home, within a cozy ambience and a relaxed mood; this is known as teleworking or telecommuting; than in traffic and later in a closed office. In the modern workspace, the daily commuting to a central place of work is replaced by telecommunication links. Employees work from home, while others, occasionally also referred to as nomad workers or web commuters, utilize mobile telecommunications technology to work from coffee shops or other locations. A common phrase frequently repeated in telecommuting is that "work is something you do, not somewhere you travel to".

Another aspect of the modern workspace is globalization, which means an employee could cover multiple territories. There is a need to reduce travel costs by allowing the employee to work away from the office as much as he or she is virtually in it. Telecommuting thus protects our environment by reducing carbon emissions. Working from home also means the employee can save money in other ways in addition to cutting down on commuting such as less money is spent on lunch , no longer have to buy formal office attire and so on. The changing work practices and increased mobility have produced a new breed of telecommuter, a more sophisticated consumer with demand for rich-media technologies, devices and applications.

CIOs are faced with a challenge which requires them to provide a solution which connects any mobile device to your corporate resources over any mobile network for the telecommuters. In other words, to provide secure access to the office network from remote PCs, laptops, tablets, mobile phones and web browsers. There is also a need to use social tools, for instance blogs, wikis and social network sites, to increase productivity, improve access to subject matter experts, and connect co-workers across functional and geographic boundaries. Business intelligence on the market trends can be gathered by linking the use of social software to the enterprise network.

In the current market, various enterprise solutions available such that a telecommuter has access to business information on the mobile phone when he or she is on the go – email, calendars, documents, tasks. Instances include enterprise solutions like MS Exchange, SharePoint and BlackBerry Enterprise Server. For more collaborative experiences, HyperOffice enables you to push and keep in sync with corporate email, calendars, contacts, tasks; share documents and calendars; irrespective of mobile device – iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, many Nokia and Android phones, Java and SyncML phones, and more. Web conferencing lets you connect with anyone, anywhere, in real time. For instance, WebEx combines desktop sharing through a web browser with phone conferencing and video, so everyone sees the same thing while you talk.

Telecommuting has been facing a couple of challenges though. For a start, mobile devices present a more constrained computing environment compared to desktop computers. In terms of battery life and form factor, mobile devices tend to have less powerful CPUs, less memory, less storage, restricted power consumption, smaller displays, missing or restricted input devices. Secondly, collaboration applications require dedicated servers and technical staff leading to a high cost of ownership. In fact, some applications, such as the Blackberry Server Enterprise, will only work with particular devices; compelling an organization to replace all the devices. Mobile devices also present a security risk since users carry sensitive information wherever they go. It is prudent to install on-board encryption software or a mechanism to wipe sensitive in case the device is lost. Because monitoring performance is more difficult for those working at home, managers often do not recognize the contributions made by telecommuters by way of good performance reviews and promotions.