Reaching for the remote
Resellers stand to gain from the growth in teleworking as the need for specialised kit and services increases. Ken Young reports.
Our work is moving with us more than ever. Companies are now thinking about working locations in terms of options and choices: teleworking, home working, remote working, hot-desking and support for road warriors, to name but a few.
Most have adopted at least one of these in the past 10 years, and the trend to work from a range of locations shows no sign of abating.
The European Commission claims that there are 10 million teleworkers in Europe. The National Office of Statistics estimates the UK figure to be two million.
Not surprisingly, vendors, distributors and value-add resellers (VARs) are seeing the potential to cash in on the need for kit and services in out-of-office locations. But is teleworking really happening? Is the demand really there?
The most recent research was conducted by security specialist SonicWall. Perhaps in line with anecdotal evidence, it found that teleworking is now very common.
It revealed that over 80 per cent of companies in the UK allow employees to work from home on a regular or occasional basis.
Forty per cent of the companies that permit teleworking allow employees to access the company's network from home via the internet.
But the research also highlights what many resellers have told vnunet.com's sister title Computer Reseller News: big companies are more likely to encourage teleworking than small to medium sized enterprises.
Ninety-eight per cent of companies with a turnover of £20m or more allow teleworking, but only 70 per cent of small businesses earning between £1m and £5m permit it.
Is it safe?
Perhaps not surprisingly for research conducted by a security firm, it also highlighted concerns over security.
While a large number of survey respondents said that they believed teleworking would become more common, 52 per cent were concerned about the security issues associated with allowing remote access to the corporate network. Forty-four per cent cited cost as another barrier.
But some say that lack of legislation is also holding back teleworking. The European Commission has set itself the task of harmonising teleworking in member states.
Last year an agreement was signed by representatives of European employers and trade unions that will form the basis of European laws on teleworking. But these will not come into effect until May 2005 at the earliest.
Michael Chissick, IT and e-commerce partner at City law firm Field Fisher Waterhouse, pointed out that UK firms rarely have guidelines for teleworking.
"A few of the larger ones do but in reality there is not a great demand among staff for full-time teleworking, so it's usually just an occasional thing that isn't tightly defined," he explained. "Most firms don't provide training or have a formalised teleworking policy."
But with the increasingly aggressive roll-out of broadband services, ever-cheaper PCs, and the arrival of GPRS mobile networks, many now feel that teleworking is a growing niche for the channel.
The question facing most VARs is how much time and resources to allocate to get a piece of this growing business and, most importantly, which products and services to market and support.
Mark Darvill, director of technology at reseller Logical, has a pragmatic approach. "Both voice and data communication between employee and company must be constant to ensure that the teleworker is seen as an integral part of the company rather than a remote contractor," he said.
"Ideally, the office email and phone should be directly linked to the employee's home. The system must be set up to benefit not just the teleworker but the co-workers in the office trying to communicate with them.
"The return on investment from teleworking ultimately depends on the employee's increased efficiency and productivity.
"Naturally, there is a cost involved in establishing the teleworker, for example the hardware and a secure connection to the enterprise network."
Employees teleworking for any length of time must have access to the health and safety provisions they would have in the office, such as fire extinguishers and fire escapes, according to Darvill.
"For these reasons, teleworking might remain an ad hoc exercise rather than a regular enterprise practice," he suggested.
Packaged solutions
Distributor InterQuad is typical of many firms seeking to produce a package that is attractive to resellers and their customers.
In October it launched its Secure Virtual Workplace (SVW), specifically aimed at customers seeking remote working options.
The SVW package has been created by bringing together three vendors: Citrix (hardware), RSA (security) and EMC (storage).
Sean Fane, managing director of VAR InterQuad, believes that the emphasis on security is what the market wants.
"SVW is not just another way to access the office remotely. It offers a higher level of security and return on investment. The storage component means there is also a failsafe that meets the needs of disaster recovery scenarios," he said.
InterQuad aims to take on a total of 35 resellers committed to selling SVW, all of which must be accredited by at least one of the three vendors already. Fane estimated that gaining full accreditation from scratch would cost about £4,500 per VAR.
He believes that about 300 resellers already have some accreditation that makes the SVW concept attractive to them.
In practice, some resellers are finding a small but steady demand for teleworking products. Checkpoint and SonicWall reseller Blue River Systems provides internet security products for supporting remote workers.
Managing director Paul Webb explained that most of the demand comes from company owners and their sales directors.
After these key staff, he then sees some demand from IT people and clerical workers, where it is seen as a means of reducing costs.
Webb indicated that 90 per cent of his customers are using broadband connections, although broadband is unavailable in about a quarter of the locations being considered. In some cases he offers BT Anytime (ISDN), which can reduce costs for customers.
"Some customers want Voice over IP so they can link into the corporate phone system, which is important if you want full facilities for remote working," he said.
The pitch
So how does Blue River find the process of selling the teleworking concept? Webb emphasised that smaller firms are still a big problem.
"Only large companies have most of their paper-based filing on a database," he said. "Smaller firms are still living off large filing cabinets and you can't access them if you are working remotely; some don't even use email. This really needs to be sorted out. But the main demand is definitely for remote email."
And what about limitations on the growth of this market? According to Webb, there need to be cheaper security options. "The solutions are there, but buyers underestimate the total cost of implementing them," he explained.
"In addition, it needs to reach a level of simplicity where IT guys don't have to think about it. Sod's Law says it is invariably a hassle for the tech guys. The reality in most firms is that they don't have the security skills in-house."
But perhaps security fears over teleworking can be turned to the advantage of resellers. Harry Gostling, UK country manager at SonicWall, claimed that the company's research points the way.
"The results reveal that there is a tremendous opportunity for security resellers to work with UK businesses more closely to help them understand the internet security risks faced by firms with home workers," he said.
"The fact that two-thirds of businesses are not encrypting their data via a virtual private network [VPN] should cause widespread concern."
Lack of options
But perhaps, as stated earlier, the lack of options for integrating teleworkers into the office phone network is holding the market back.
Richard Jones, technical director at NXGear, a distributor of the Forte range of phones and PBXs, pointed out that the market is slow.
"It's less than one in 100 firms," he said. "For us, certain sectors are worth focusing on, like rural call centres where staff costs are lower, but I see this growing as places like London get too congested for normal call services to operate well."
But Jones believes that telephony is the key to teleworking. "A home worker needs ISDN on their home phone, dial-up IP to a fixed price connection and virtual access to the main network," he explained. "We help dealers design these solutions and get revenue from support after the sale."
The internet service provider (ISP) business has adapted well to distribution through VARs with a range of packages on offer. Bandwidth wholesaler NetServices is an example of the new proliferation of options.
It offers a simple package for resellers, allowing them to deliver own-brand ADSL without network construction or management.
NetServices has its own 155Mbps Synchronous Digital Hierarchy connection that allows resellers to turn customers into ISPs and then produce an ongoing revenue stream for themselves.
Jamie Moore, virtual ISP account manager at NetServices, is bullish. "To ignore this opportunity would be crazy," he said.
But to gain this new revenue a VAR has to commit to sign up at least four firms per year, which is not for the faint hearted in the current climate.
Web-based solutions
Using the internet is also vital to Weybridge-based Sirocom's teleworking system. It installs IP VPNs, an increasingly popular and cheaper alternative to the more established VPNs pioneered by telecoms operators for corporate customers.
Sirocom's first major customer was First Choice Holidays, for which it created an IP VPN spanning 55 locations.
IP VPNs are endorsed by Ovum research. "Quality of service provision means that IP-based VPNs are now suited to more than just 'best effort' applications," stated Peter Hall, principal analyst at the firm.
Simon Rogan, managing director of Sirocom, suggested that companies are just entering the phase where teleworking is taken seriously.
"Firms now realise the need for a teleworking strategy that will standardise functionality, access, service-level agreements, quality of service and billing," he said.
"Until recently, many deployments would be fairly ad hoc and depend on the individual teleworker's aptitude and desire to have a workable teleworking set-up.
"I believe that organisations without a teleworking strategy are increasingly likely to damage their prospects of recruiting the best staff."
Perhaps more common than pure teleworking is the arrival of mobile teams. These are groups of co-workers that are mobile but, when deskbound, can be found at home or at the office.
Such road warriors need phone technology that supports this form of working while maintaining the corporate image.
Voice and data reseller Convergent Systems markets Teamphone's Smart Numbers package to meet this need.
The service gives each team member a single telephone number which reaches them direct, goes through to messaging, or can be set to divert to other team members.
A single team phone number can also be given so that calls can be allocated on availability.
Management reporting includes an activity log showing all calls for later billing. The solution is outsourced, thus simplifying initial set up.
Whichever form of teleworking end-users adopt, the growing demand for work flexibility among employees means that there will be opportunities, of sorts, for the channel.
WHO QUALIFIES AS A TELEWORKER?
The European Commission's definition of teleworkers is:
- Home-based employed staff, most of whom work alternately at home and on the employer's premises.
- Self-employed workers who normally work from home.
- Mobile workers who spend at least 10 hours per week away from home or main place of work.
- Casual workers who fall into the first category.
Health and safety regulations are a hurdle for teleworking. Current legislation states that employees who are teleworking for any length of time must have access to the same health and safety provisions as they would in the office.
For example, fire extinguishers and fire escapes must be installed in the teleworker's home. This, obviously, drives up the cost.
A DISGRUNTLED TELEWORKER
Phil Turtle, a former marketing manager at GEC, runs Turtle Consulting Group, a business-to-business marketing and PR company entirely dependent on teleworking technology.
The operation consists of a VPN between offices in Manchester and Brighton with further links to 14 teleworking consultants.
The Brighton office runs a database web server on a Mac cube. The company spends about £10,000 on phone and internet costs from the Brighton office. Consultants are all self-employed home workers, based all around the country.
"I don't want my clients to have to listen to nasty 'beeps' when call waiting. I want a system where the call automatically diverts to another member of the team if my line is engaged," explained Turtle.
"I want us all to be able to access and modify the same computer documents, securely and with no downtime. But does BT or anyone else take us seriously and provide anything other than the most basic of systems? No.
"Over a decade ago, when I was marketing manager for GEC's System X - the phone system in 70 per cent of BT's exchanges - it could transform a group of phone lines into a virtual switch with an operator, call transfer and extension number dialling. But even now, BT is not marketing this service."
And when it comes to cost-effective shared IT systems, Turtle complains that he has searched "high and low" to no avail.
"Yes, there are corporate solutions, but they require cost-prohibitive dedicated lines or high-speed circuits, which individual teleworkers, or even teleworking SMEs, simply cannot afford," he said.
CONTACTS:
Blue River Systems (01344) 382 599
www.blueriversystems.com
Convergent Systems (01489) 889 300
www.convergentsystems.uk.com
Logical (020) 7324 1900
www.logical.com
NXGear (08707) 444 333
www.nxgear.co.uk
Sirocom (01932) 264 700
www.sirocom.com
SonicWall (01344) 668 090
www.sonicwall.com
Turtle Consulting (070) 7470 7060
www.turtleconsulting.com