ANTenna Blog -- Business & E-Business

It's time for small and midsize businesses to accept that at least some of their workers will be working remotely – whether in satellite offices or from their home offices. Between rising gas prices, costs of maintaining central offices, and the increasing need (and desire) for flexibility, it's a trend that is not going away. But before your IT department starts to panic, check out this list of technologies for remote office support.

InformationWeek's Michael Healey has compiled six top technologies for supporting remote offices and adds on two to avoid (which can be just as helpful).

Healey covers server virtualization, desktop virtualization, IP telephony, WAN optimization, UTM (unified threat management) appliances and Instant Messaging. With each technology he covers the "promise" and provides a "reality check."

IM can reduce e-mail and enhance communication but don't forget about the potential for lost productivity and the need to encourage adoption. IP telephony is flexible, affordable, and can enhance productivity but don't underestimate the potential bandwidth hit.

Desktop virtualization gets lots of kudos from Healey: "Desktop virtualization is generating a lot of buzz as the savior for the remote office, with early offerings from VMware, Citrix, and Sun holding the promise of addressing some of the core problems faced in Citrix/Terminal Server environments. The concept that each user can check out a desktop session with no more worries about application or hardware incompatibility is undeniably appealing."

But here too he adds a caveat: "Virtualized Windows XP sessions may be better than Terminal Server, but users are still dependent on a remote desktop client. And graphics performance and the ability to play media files have long been sore points for thin-client-centric applications." He adds that users will need "more server horsepower for a virtual desktop infrastructure vs. a Citrix or Terminal Server setup."

Each of these technologies are interesting and worth checking out. What is perhaps most interesting is that Healey notes that remote offices "have a serious image problem: 57% of respondents to a recent reader survey cite remote employees as the biggest threat to their organizations among all users." It is clear that remote working is not for everyone and many supervisors, as well as employees, prefer being in the office.

But just as many don't. And the costs of maintaining a central office can be costly – especially for a smaller business with limited resources. I recently interviewed Gene Marks who gave up his office headquarters about a year ago because of the expense. He put a server in his basement and now runs a consulting firm out of his home office with his 10 employees who are all over the country. Its the technologies that made this possible.

Whether you have a remote office and remote workers or not, check out Healey's article. At the very least, you'll see what's possible and you'll be ready when the trend comes your way.