For centuries the workers of the world have had to locate within commuting distance of their work. It was necessary because their work could hardly travel to where they lived. Not anymore. The paradigm of moving work to people rather than moving people to work is being adopted more and more by progressive companies who understand that there are benefits that devolve both to the enterprise as well as to employees.

For the employee working at a remote location, telework provides for a choice in lifestyle, living where they want to live, as well as reduction in time (and energy) spent commuting. According to the US census, the average worker spends more than 100 hours a year commuting. During this time they consume approximately 150 gallons of gasoline, which in these days of $3 per gallon of gas is about $500 of after tax income.

For the enterprise, telework allows for greater diversity in the organization, drawing upon individuals from many cultures and perspectives regardless of location. Diversity of perspective usually allows for more ideas in a shorter period of time - a more innovative and productive environment. It also provides the opportunity to reduce costs on office space and other fixed costs. Virtual presence enables easier movement of work between locations based upon time zones. As new work locations start their day, they can be brought into the enterprise processes unnoticed by the end user. Jet Blue has been known for using this technique for its customer support.

One of the areas the IT industry is focusing on is Unified Communications. This involves the use of Voice-over IP technologies (VoIP) to provide transparent access to individuals over voice, messaging and video. In the past the data and voice networks were managed and accessed separately. We are moving into an age where information delivery is taking place over the same mechanism regardless of format, based on standards like Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).SIP can be used to create two-party, multiparty, or multicast sessions that include Internet telephone calls, multimedia distribution, and multimedia conferences and is the basis for most VoIP products and services.

Unified communications is becoming the de facto source for information about the context of the individual: where they are located, what role they're playing, what they've worked on in the past, as well as their availability. The focus will with employee identity at the core. Once an organization makes the transition to the approach it will enable:

• Better access to experts - Pools of expertise can be defined within the enterprise and that pool can be addressed directly. Anyone within that pool can respond as they are available. This will reduce the constraints upon the individual. This pooling approach will also allow for the distribution of work in automated workflows.
• Reduced response time to events - When an event takes place where a decision needs to be made or assistance given, the enterprise can draw upon the context information to send it to the people who are actually available to respond. Escalation techniques can be defined so that response time can be defined and controlled more effectively than ad-hoc relationship based approaches.
• Reduced travel costs - As organizations begin to develop a common understanding of how to access an individual, it will not matter if the person is in the same building, on the same continent or working at home. They are represented in the enterprise in a simple and consistent way that can be accessed reliably.
• Accelerated project delivery - Knowing how to find individuals or groups with equivalent capabilities removes latency from projects. Being able to find the status of the people on the project and pull together a conference call on the fly and reach a consensus quickly will improve the agility of organizations and reduce time to market.
• Greater control over IP - In order to facilitate the information flow for the environment described, more sophisticated controls will be required and everyone will benefit.