By Melanie Turek

Principal Research Analyst, Nemertes Research LLC

Executive Summary

Chances are, if you work for a company with more than a few dozen employees, you work for a company that has remote workers, whether they’re in a satellite office, a home office or spend almost all their time on the road.

But the virtual workplace is about more than having a distributed workforce. It’s about having employees regularly work in a location that’s separate from that of their managers, direct reports and/or immediate co-workers. In other words, it’s about having employees who regularly work with people without actually seeing them live. And often, it’s about having employees who interact across regions, countries, and time zones.

According to Nemertes’ benchmark, “Convergence: Reality at Last,” on average 90% of employees work away from their company’s headquarters location. That makes it harder for employees to collaborate with one another, and with partners, suppliers and even customers. Planned meetings are more difficult to orchestrate; ad-hoc sessions, harder still. Since people can’t see whether their co-workers are available (or even in the office), they spend more time playing phone and e-mail tag, and less time actually engaging. This increases the amount of time it takes to get work done, and decreases the sense of teamwork that can bring a workforce together, boost productivity, and increase the bottom line.

In a sense, we’re the victims of our own progress. Twenty years ago—even, for most companies, as little as five or 10 years ago—it was relatively easy to collaborate with co-workers. Chances are, the people you worked with day in and day out worked right next you, or just down the hall, and even the people you worked with infrequently were probably nearby when needed. You knew when they were in the office, you knew when they were not; if you called and got a busy signal, it was a simple matter to get up, stretch your legs, and walk by their desk. Spontaneous meetings around the water cooler were a regular occurrence—and some of your best ideas came from those unplanned encounters. Sales calls were made in person, as were internal business meetings.

In the years since, technology has changed all that. What’s more, on average about one third of employees work in a different location from their managers and/or their immediate co-workers (that is, the people they work most closely with on a day-to-day basis), according to Nemertes’ upcoming benchmark “The Virtual Workplace: Leveraging Real-Time Communications in the Enterprise.” Water-cooler meetings aren’t possible anymore; nor is it a simple matter to “see” whether the people you need to reach are around and, more importantly, available for an impromptu discussion.

Although e-mail offers help, it’s not a panacea. In fact, e-mail can hinder collaboration: Its one-to-one nature makes it cumbersome for group dialog. How many of us have seen a single e-mail thread turn into dozens of separate but related strings? And concerns about e-mail security—viruses and spam are making some IT executives question the true value of e-mail, and its safety as a communications device—have many IT managers looking for an alternative. Real-time communications technologies can help. And they are, quite literally, changing the way we work.

What are Real-Time Communications?

Real-time communications span a variety of tools and technologies, but they all have one thing in common: They bring people together immediately, live and in person. Some, such as instant messaging and basic find me/follow me capabilities, are one-to-one in nature (though they can be expanded, typically, to include more parties). Others, including audio, video and Web conferencing, are designed to involve multiple participants. And all are increasingly driven by presence, which is the ability to see where someone is; whether he or she is available to chat, talk, or collaborate; and how they’d prefer to be reached.

Indeed, presence is really at the heart of today’s real-time technologies, and it’s the technology best-set to make the virtual workplace as productive—even more productive—than the workplace of old. Presence brings back the water cooler, the walk down the hall, the casual encounter that enables spontaneous collaboration. Presence ensures all employees, regardless of where they’re located and when they work, are visible to the people who need to reach them most.

Why Now?

We believe real-time communications technologies are on the verge of revolutionizing the way companies work. Although pervasiveness is still at least five years away, leading edge organizations are leveraging the technology today, to boost employee productivity and increase their ability to operate in an increasingly virtual world.

Partly, this is due to the fact that more and more companies have workers across the country and the world. But there are other factors at play as well.

Convergence is playing a huge role. As companies deploy IP and VOIP throughout their enterprises, they’re looking for ways the leverage their investments. Integrating presence, conferencing and chat capabilities is a logical next step. We expect that as companies’ IP infrastructures mature and expand, they will incorporate more real-time communications technologies into their networks. That will involve integrating presence with their portal, online workspace and conferencing technologies. The goal is to turn what have traditionally be asynchronous technologies into real-time tools that let users connect immediately, on the fly, and get the job done.

The desktop is changing, and as it does so, so is the way people work.

Melanie Turek is Principal Research Analyst and senior partner at Nemertes Research LLC, a leading research firm that provides in-depth analysis of the business value of emerging technologies. Ms. Turek can be reached at 970-871-6110 or melanie@nemertes.com.