First in a series
Over the past few years, the number of people who work from home or from a small office has been growing substantially.
The United States easily has the highest percentage of mobile workers in its workforce, with close to 75% of all workers today engaged in some type of mobile activity, and an expected 119.7 million mobile workers by 2013, according to U.S. government statistics. Worldwide, there will be 1.19b mobile workers within the next three years.
Many of these mobile and remote workers are home-based professionals (business owners and employees) who work primarily from their home office and, if they are employees, are away from their primary workplace at least 20% of the time, according to researcher IDC. The small office/home office (SOHO) segment is also made up of so-called 'work extenders,' who take work home from traditional jobs after normal business hours and may work in the evenings or on weekends.
In all cases, however, these SOHO workers are looking for the same return on technology investments as the top companies with major mobile workforces and large budgets: To connect, communicate, and collaborate with customers, clients and co-workers by using the latest tools and technology advances.
Extending SOHO resources
Keeping in touch and communicating is probably the most important goal in the SOHO world, relying on everything from simple email and instant messaging to more interactive social networking platforms. This means having a computer system in place that is equipped with a wired or wireless communications capability, and software that can not only send and receive messages but can organize and keep track of messages and key files.
Many SOHO setups have an 802.11 Wi-Fi system in place, but also make use high-speed wireless broadband and short-range communications alternatives like Bluetooth to connect wirelessly to in-office printers, LCD projectors and other equipment. An increasing number of notebook systems also include multiple communications technologies, including high-speed cellular (3G) that can be used to supplement 802.11 when out and about and away from a Wi-Fi hotspot.
An increasing number of SOHO workers are using small handheld systems to extend computing resources beyond the confines of an office and bring data resources to the point of customer action. In fact, by 2012, handhelds are expected to account for half of all Wi-Fi hotpot connections, says market researcher In-Stat. This extended mobility is changing the dynamics of the SOHO worker, but also adding new technology solution possibilities to the mix – like mobile printers, mobile presentation devices and evolving platforms like tablet PCs.
Information safeguards
Security is a top concern among the SOHO set, and not just the security surrounding electronic messages and wireless connections. Data backup and recovery is also a major concern among small office and home office users, since most do not have the luxury of a dedicated IT support department or network-based backup and archiving capability. Corrupted or lost data can not only result in lost business or business opportunities, but may even present some legal problems since companies of all sizes must have adequate safeguards in place to protect data and maintain records for a specific period of time.
An unexpected disruption in business, due to lost data or a storage crash might also impact a small company’s survival. According to U.S. government statistics, for example, more than 90% of companies that had trouble restoring their data after a data disaster are out of business within 18 months.
While most people realize the importance of data backups, a large majority of U.S. users (about 92%) still fail to up to backup their personal and business information – including financial information and work-related documents - on a regular basis, according to the results of a study conducted earlier this year by Harris Interactive on behalf of an online backup service provider. Roughly 30% of the more than 2,000 people taking part in the survey admitted backing their data up once a month, while 15% did it weekly and only 8% backed up their data to a local disk or remote service once a day.
Online backup services can range in price from a few dollars to tens of dollars per month. Off-site storage is options are also provided by Google, Amazon and most every online service provider as a free or paid option. The benefit to these services is that backups can be scheduled to automatically occur throughout the day as new information is stored on a computer’s internal hard disk, or at night when the backup process does not get in the way of the business workflow and tie up compute resources.
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