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Creating A Virtual Office?
Fubar asks: "My small company of 10 employees is considering letting our lease run out on our office space and is thinking about having everyone work from home (or wherever they want). I have been tasked with putting a plan together to provide voice and data connectivity to each employee. What sort of solutions have you implemented?"
I'm considering the following for providing voice service:
+ Order an extra analog line for each employee
+ Reimburse each employee for a second line on their cell phones
+ Host our current phone system in my home office, add a VoIP card and provide an endpoint for each employee
+ Use third-party VoIP hosting service" What options have you used to create a virtual office, and what suggestions would might you give to anyone else attempting to do the same?
+ Order an extra analog line for each employee
+ Reimburse each employee for a second line on their cell phones
+ Host our current phone system in my home office, add a VoIP card and provide an endpoint for each employee
+ Use third-party VoIP hosting service" What options have you used to create a virtual office, and what suggestions would might you give to anyone else attempting to do the same?
I would create my virtual office in second life but I'd be afraid that giant wieners would run through my lobby and scare away my customers.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Those employees had better be damned dedicated to the company if no centralized physical space exists anymore. You will find yourselves meeting in a lot of places. Maybe just downgrade the space to something like a meeting room you can rent a few times a week.
Communications:
1. VoIP (something like Packet8) or company-paid cell phone, probably a nextel group plan. Actually, Skype conferencing should work good enough.
2. Workstations - Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services Server. Then you don't care about what their workstations are like and the environment is manageable so you have no backup headaches.
3. In-person lunches at least once a week. It can get really boring to work from home!
I implement virtual offices all the time, so feel free to contact me through my website.
Good luck.
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
By isolating people you make social workings of the company impossible. You can't have face to face meetings, you can't casually walk up to someone and sketch a diagram or two, you complicate things that don't have to be complicated. IMO, you will lose far more in productivity than you gain in giving up the office space. How many companies do that? Hardly any; even one-man companies often maintain an office which is their public face - where they have an address, where they meet visitors, where they make phone calls, where they are a business. And at home they are at home - relaxing, reading, having family etc. Mixing work and home is bad. It's even difficult to work at home, where other distractions are present.
I wouldn't do it as many people remote work as goof off work. My experience is at most 25% of the people really work at home, and they are the ones absolutely passionate about what they do. Traits successful to work at home:
If the person can't demonstraight the above at the office, it will only become worse working at home.
So your major question should be are your staff suitable? My guess is some are, and many not. I am going through this with a consultant right now, he shows a low connect time, no results and is precisely a day away from being fired. Be prepared to do this for a lack of performance.
I agree completely. I'm involved a side project that's trying to get off the ground as a legitimate business, and only two of us out of seven on the team are in the same geographical area. We've done audio and video conferencing (Skype seems to work best for cross-platform multi-way audio, nobody seems to do reliable cross-platform video but iChat has given us the best quality for one on one), but it's so much less efficient than being in the same room. Everything is more time consuming over long distance, whether it's via video chat, audio, or text/email. This is making our progress much slower than we'd like.
Unless your team has well defined roles and each person can (and will) work effectively without much discussion, I'd say don't ditch the office just yet. And especially if communication is key to your success, make sure people get into the same room often. There's just no substitute for meeting face to face.
First of all, consider to rent a cheaper place.
Personally, I don't like having my whole office at home. In my case it's not about children or other sources of noises but I don't feel "at work" sitting in front of my PC. I would require a separate (and quite) working room to be productive.
Continuing with noises - if some employees have a quick question they'll call each other. This may be very disturbing.
Next, consider putting in cost for connectivity. Not only phone lines and a phone server, you will need a central VPN server to share files.
Then, think about security. You don't have any control about the employees PCs anymore. I could bet that there are an easy target for malware. Think about that the computers may be used by other people, like their kids. Don't wait for a "Cool I ownz sensitive data of that company - letz put on myspace to show how coolz I am!" to happen.
Last point is, where to meet up with customers? Tell them you not have an office and meet at Starbucks?
Seriously, have a look around for a cheaper office.
Tech support uses it sometimes with remote control yielded by a customer (through their Java client) to check the reported problems with our apps and their system config. One can even look, with customer permission, in real time into remote threads (Dr. Watson style hex dumps), all windows (a la SDK Spy++), apps, dll's, memory heaps (layout and hex dumps). These latter low level features are usually done when tech support guy has to conference in a programmer into his tech support session to help out with some trickier problem. In 1990s, I used to travel to customer locations to do this kind of troubleshooting.
I have set up and supported remote sites and home based telecommuting. Listen to my advice, listen very carefully and save your sanity.
If your organization is large enough then it is likely that you will have a few older desktop PCs that have been or are due for replacement during an upgrade cycle. PCs that are inadequate for Microsoft XP and Office2003 are more than powerful enough for many current versions of Linux, especially for the role of server. Also second hand PCs with the required specifications are very cheaply acquired.
1) Find an older PC, at least a PII 300 with 256 MB memory, to set up as a headless ( no display or keyboard ) server and firewall. A simple web based interface ( or even an external hardware push button ) can be used by the local users to start/stop the server and internet connection. All other maintenance should be handled remotely via ssh, webmin and VNC.
2) Install a second NIC or connect the modem directly to the server. Connection to the Internet should be through the server and connection to the Office should be through a VPN on the server. Use a dynamic IP service for each site so you can remotely log on to the local server via ssh.
3) Install a new IDE hard drive in a 3.5" removable rack and tray. The drive should be than big enough for the operating system (Linux of course) and copies of some of the local desktop partitions. A telecommuter can shut down the server and bring in the drive during the day to resync and repair.
4) Install a DHCP demon on the local server to allocate local IP addresses, DNS and gateway settings. If the desktops are network boot capable then install TFTP to remotely boot and use Knoppix via PXE and the network. If the desktop OS is constantly crashing, or is infected by malware, the user can select PXE/network boot via the BIOS, and boot into Knoppix. The user can then be instructed over the phone to enable the ssh server to allow remote scan,repair and reimaging of the desktop partitions. The user can use the Knoppix desktop to continue working with full access to files while the the remote administrator fixes/reimages the drive in the background.( Consider hiring someone who knows how to customise Knoppix or another live Linux system for your setup )
5) Partition the desktops with as small as required C: partition ( or in the case of Linux the root partition ) for software. When software is install, use dd and netcat via live Knoppix to copy/clone a snapshot of the partition to the server. You can allocate the remaining free space as a persistent partition where documents are stored.
6) Install and enable remote VNC service on all the platforms, but only allow incoming connections from the local server ( which is redirected over a SSH tunnel ).
7) For local backup, create share directories on the desktop accessible by the server. On the local server create loopback encrypted file systems, unmount and copy the images to the desktops shares in chunks, using redundancy if enough space is available on the desktops. Checksum ( MD5 is enough ) each piece.
8) If the network load to the Office is taking up all the available internet bandwidth or the connection is just too slow then install proxy servers on the local server. You can also consider using a distributed filesystem ( OpenAFS is still the best ) wi
If you are near a community college, you might have more meeting options. Many community colleges support small local businesses directly. While I cannot guarantee that the closest college to you has all this, these are fairly commonly available:
Meeting rooms in their libraries or other facilities that can be used for free or rented for a nominal fee.
Rooms with podiums, video projectors, and even computers that can be used or rented.
Small business support centers with specialized facilities and support options.
Access to costly online research databases available to community patrons.
Cafeterias that can internally cater meetings.
With more than 3,000 community / technical colleges across the US, there might be something near you. Many times, even though the college itself might be distant, it might have a local campus or branch with some of the options above.
Every business is different, and as a result, the best way to run it will be based on what the business is, and if that will work for you.
Look as customer communication. How do your customers contact you, and if you go to a distributed environment, how will that affect your customers calling in? Do you have a receptionist who answers the phones?
Do most of your employees work in the office, or do they come in to work, but then go out to service their employees while spending only an hour or so in the office each day?
Do you and your employees live in the same area, or do you all spend 30-90 minutes each way driving in to work?
Do customers have the ability to talk directly to the employees? This may sound like a strange question, but not all companies want their employees to be contacted directly, and instead will have the people answering the main number take messages.
Being able to talk face to face with your employees on a regular basis is important here. You also won't be able to see if a new employee is doing things the right way or the wrong way if you let EVERYONE work from home. In some cases though, it makes sense to have SOME people who can work from home, but others who MUST show up at some sort of office.
Hi,
I serve many small local business, many who have some employees that work from from regularly or permenantly.
For telephone, the cell phone makes the most sense. Works anywhere and if you get all employees on the same carrier, you can get free mobile-to-mobile calls, thus reducing the amount of minutes everyone needs. See if you can put them all on a large family plan or something.
For data, DSL/cable at people's homes is great, but a step further would be internet via cell phone/Treo/Blackberry when they are mobile. If you get Blackberry's on one of the above plans, the tethering internet access is often included (some carriers). Depends if they will be sitting at their home "desks" all day or running around more.
Employees should still have company-provided computers. A huge huge problem is the kids of the employees getting on their home computers and messing things up (spyware, consumer apps, not running updates, etc). Kids have their computer, Mom and Dad have another password protected computer that kids do not use even if just for a second.
I would also recommend still having a server somewhere for backup and to ensure all of the company files are stored in one place. Novell's iFolder product is an excellent choice for getting files synced back to a server with little to no user interaction. It comes in their Open Workgroup Suite package (along with GroupWise for e-mail, etc, etc, the works.) They also have an open-sourced version of iFolder at http://www.ifolder.com/ but last I looked it was somewhat unstable.
You still will have to deal with tech support of everyone's PC (printing, drive crashes, all the regular stuff) so a remote control package that will traverse NAT would be helpful. UltraVNC has a reverse-VNC mode that will work in this way with the user just kicking off the connection and you taking it from there. Also, a software management type app would be nice for patching and software distrribution. Don't want to have to run to everyone's house to install a new program, etc, if possible. Novell's ZENWorks is aaaa decent general purpose management app and something like Shavlik is good for patching Windows boxes.
As others have mentioned, communication is key between employees. Encourage them to meet and/or use those cells phones a lot, especially if they have free mobile-t0-mobile calls they have no reason not to pick up the phone regularly.
The benefits can be great if done right. There's nothing like getting up and walking into the next room to be at work!
-m
http://www.invisik.com
I am totally blown away that so many people responded to this guy's question with anti-telecommuter FUD.
Having been a telecommuter for five years, I think I have a pretty good perspective on the value proposition:
1. Employee retention. Employees that telecommute have cheap golden handcuffs. I could never go back to commuting to a fucking cube farm and, unfortunately, employers that offer telecommuting are few and far between (due to the luddite FUD like we saw on this topic).
2. Commuting is rediculous. I used to spend three hours a day commuting. Lots of people do worse. During those three hours, I am not working and generally unavailable (unless I am driving solo, which means I can take phone calls, but has a huge social impact). Now that I work at home, I am available at 6am for email and chat while I am eating breakfast - that's 8am on the east coast and 2pm for Western Europe. If you include commuting time as work (since it really is), yes I "work" less than a cube farmer, but I am available more.
3. Work shouldn't be social time. If I want to socialize, I will do so with my friends, not my co-workers. I used to hate going to the cube farm because I knew I would have to spend too much time with the idle chit chat at the "watercooler," or worse yet, in my fricking cube. Socializing with your co-workers does NOT make your work relationship better, in fact it makes it much harder to keep people focused on actually working.
3. Face time is not that important. I am a product manager and one could say, of all the telecommutable jobs, being a PM should require more face time. Bullshit. The real problem is that many people in the corporate world do not know how to have an effective conference call. I get stuck on these calls all the time and the worst offenders are the people who work at the cube farm mothership in San Jose. When the call is something I care about, I will lead the meeting. When I am at the cube farm mothership for meetings, they are usually far less productive.
4. Living in a major metro sucks ass. I lived in the Bay Area for much of my life and, while it is an OK place to go for a vacation, I'd never want to live in that shit hole again. I live in the mountains of New Mexico now. It takes me 15 minutes to get to civilization (Whole Foods, restaurants, symphony, airport, etc...). For the price of my awesome spread on 3 acres, I could buy a crackerbox house in the far flung suburbs if I had to work in the Bay Area. I would have to drive hours to get to work.