It’s no huge surprise that with a relatively healthy global economy, we’re seeing corporate expansion. I’m not talking about the $36 billion profit Exxon recently reported. I’m talking about the expansion of the size and number of branch locations.

Between 2005 and 2006, the number of branch locations grew by 8.9%. Between 2006 and 2007, it grew by 11%, and most IT executives say they are expecting the growth to continue and accelerate even more, according to Nemertes’ upcoming benchmark, “Building a Successful Virtual Workplace.”

Overall, 62% of organizations say they are increasing the number of branch offices this year, while 13% say they are decreasing the number of sites. A quarter of the organizations are holding steady.

Several factors are driving this growth, including the following:

* Global expansion. Companies are trying to reduce manufacturing, labor, and IT support costs by opening new locations in various countries in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. “In Asia-Pac and India, we’re expecting considerable growth, in hundreds of percentage points over next three years,” says a VP at a major financial institution.

* Employee attraction/retention. Companies don’t want to lose valued employees. So they are being more flexible about letting them work at or close to home to reduce time spent commuting or to keep them if they do not want to move when their department is relocated. Further, they want to attract new employees - even if they do not have a facility in that city.

* Merger & Acquisition. As corporate consolidation continues, many organizations are adding new branch locations because they buy other companies. This is particularly true in the financial-services space.

* Cost savings. Even though it may, at first glance, seem counterintuitive, adding more branch locations in suburban areas can save companies money if they’re moving employees from high-cost urban areas. Further, with features such as automated attendant in IP telephony systems, it’s easy for a single “virtual” attendant to handle and transfer calls among multiple branch locations.

There are, however, some organizations that are decreasing the number of branch locations. This trend shows up most often knowledge workers at insurance or nonprofit companies, manufacturers, and automotive companies. Several of these companies say they’re moving toward larger branch locations, in terms of physical size, rather than a large number of small branches. This way, they can get lower per-square-foot rental rates, and worry about the facilities management at a fewer number of sites.

The bottom line for IT and network staffs is that they have more locations to manage - more network connections, applications, infrastructure, and users to support. This is creating an increased demand for managed services and growing attention to remote-management and monitoring tools.

Next week, I’ll look behind these numbers to show you the characteristics of companies with increases and decreases in the number of branch offices.