Remote Control: Market for remote working solutions set to explode

However, the vast majority of businesses have only just started to consider the technical and human aspects that such a shift in working patterns will present. This presents an opportunity for the channel to provide support, knowledge and infrastructure to help business embrace the remote working opportunity.

Some facts
According to recent research by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, which asked UK professionals about how they see their future working lives, some 47 percent of those surveyed rated flexible working arrangements as the most important benefit. This beat performance related bonuses, which came second with 19 percent of the vote. BT saves a staggering £57m a year by enabling its employees to work flexibly, so there are hard and clear savings to be made. Savings are not just for large organisations; SMEs stand to benefit as well with the findings of a British Chambers of Commerce survey suggesting that SMEs can greatly benefit from business premise savings and critically access to a wider talent pool when offering flexible working arrangements. Recent IBM research reveals that its workforce is more productive when working from home with the average employee adding an additional nineteen hours of work a when working from home compared to colleagues that are office based.
The political will seems to be gathering pace as in this years’ Queen’s Speech, the first under the new coalition government, referred to ‘remove barriers to flexible working’ with the collation document stating: “We will extend the right to request flexible working to all employees, consulting with business on how best to do so.”
Summing up, Michael Rendell, head of human resource services, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, gave his feelings on flexible working, “Companies that can adapt to the UK’s growing flexible working culture will be best placed to sustain morale and retain top talent when the job market becomes more buoyant.”
Addressing some of the objections
So it really does appear that there is compelling and strong evidence to support businesses as they consider a remote working policy. For many businesses however there remain several areas of concern, which can potentially be a blocker. Putting ‘ability to moderate productivity’ aside it is the security of networks and access which are by far the most widespread concerns amongst SMEs. This is where the channel can really help by offering SME remote working communications ‘packages’

Technology in the frame
For any business looking to set up its workforce remotely (or connecting branch offices together) it is the VPN/Firewall solution that is pivotal. From our perspective it is a Hybrid Firewall that is often an excellent solution and logical ‘sell’. Hybrids work across multiple protocols including IPSec and SSL and give resellers and their customers the flexibility to enable tele-workers to securely connect remotely and provide the integrity to ‘open tunnel’ connect branch offices together.

Resellers should also consider the current and future requirements of network bandwidth when scoping a Firewall solution for their customers. With 100 megabyte connection speeds becoming more common, any solution needs to be able to handle multi-users, at high speed and often involving applications, which are bandwidth intensive, for example; social networking and cloud based. Not only are these applications incredibly network heavy but they also pose a real security threat. For resellers, ensuring that any Firewall they work with is able to provide deep packet inspection will help eliminate malicious code entering the business.

So in summary, there is a real trend to remote working, it is unavoidable and the business opportunity for resellers is there for the taking. Focusing on three ‘pain’ points of your customers; flexibility, bandwidth and security helps to focus and provides a clear path of requirements.