Stay Outside, But Connected

Due to new technologies and lightweight gear, new forms of remote working emerge. In Germany statistics report an increase of approximately 250% since 2003* (from then 7,5% to 18,5% now) on working remotely outside the office.

The 38 year-old Markus Albers wrote a book on this subject "Morgen komme ich später rein!", introducing rising economical concerns as a prime motive for this shift, as well as latest technological improvements such as wide area Wifi coverage, high-speed 3G-Networks, mature cloud computing and affordable collaborative software. Indeed many businesses move from installed corporate software (which are quite costly to administer) to reliable web-based applications which help sink the administration und maintenance costs significantly, and thereby function securely and properly.

In August 2007 we decided to finally drop the Microsoft Exchange Server (and the CA Virus Software) to make to the move to Google's Pro Apps and we have never looked back since then. On the following months we successively abandoned all our serverbased applications, replacing them with their web-based, remotely hosted counterparts. In just 6 months we went from 6 servers down to 1, which serves Tobit's David, which now takes care of our faxes. 

Only the elimination of the 3 Windows Servers alone, including the then overdue soft- and hardware updates to secure and maintain their functionality, saved us almost 10.000 € on investment costs, not to mention the administration and the maintenance expenses.

Thanks to state of the art VPN-connections (which any basic router can handle) to our self installed corporate wiki and Google's sharable Docs, Calendar and IM-Software, all our employees can work from anywhere they like. This even resulted in absurd demands from the employees like moving to next Starbucks and working from there, for good.

Our new office, smaller in size compared to the old one, provides WiFi-Access to all areas, doesn't rely on cable infrastructure, we use iMacs or Laptops with multiple operating systems. Many of our web-based applications have now mobile clients for Blackberries or especially iPhones, or they simply work fine with mobile browsers, so working remotely is by far not an issue anymore.

Due to this flexible structure, our company was able to acquire top-class workforce for our projects, who work remotely and continue to produce promising results. 

One simple benefit of such a working environment is already noticable: None of the employees want to waste time on unnecessary phone calls with collegues and prefer to spend their leisure time effectively, therefore they tend to document every step of their work in a trusted system which could be tracked gaplessly. Hence, our Wiki has been a home run!

Not so surprisingly, these unorthodox criteria once dominated the discussions on the location of the new office, we opted for a cheaper and quieter workplace in Suburbia with a speedy internet connection, easily reachable by public transportation; attractive "playgrounds" (Mountain bike, running trails, wandering areas) in the proximity, instead of a presentable, downtown locations.

I think we nailed it: The fresh air makes a big difference!

(*) Statistics from DER SPIEGEL interview with Markus Albers