Swine Flu - What Happens When Everyone Wants to Telecommute?
These days the swine flu scare may be settling down a little. But it's still there and not going away any time soon. Many people are taking extra precautions to avoid exposing themselves unnecessarily - the top one is to avoid crowded places. And those crowded places for many, 8 hours per day, 5 days per week, are corporate office buildings.
That's right - telecommuting is a popular option these days to avoid the germ-ridden corporate cafeterias, restrooms, and cubicle mazes. And in some cases, it's not just an option, but a requirement. Some large companies have temporarily shut down facilities in areas that are most heavily impacted by the swine flu. They're telling their employees to work from home.
But what is the impact to this innocuous-seeming solution?
The answer: a mad scramble for IT workers to make sure the infrastructure can handle the sudden dramatic spike in telecommuting. That precious Virtual Private Network or VPN that allows employees to "tunnel" into the corporate intranet from home needs servers running to support it, licenses for concurrent connections, and internet bandwidth. And as volume grows, these resources become overloaded. If there aren't sufficient servers, etc, then everyone (not just the people in the location that was shut down) will suddenly see drastic reductions in quality and speed to their remote connection. They may even start losing their connection intermittently and have to keep reconnecting.
While those who usually work in the office and are just working from home temporarily may tolerate this inconvenience, the die hard career telecommuters who work from home every day will certainly notice the difference. And chances are they'll be calling the help desk and yelling at whoever will listen. That adds up to increased support calls which means even more IT costs. And don't forget the increased support costs from the large number of people who find themselves trying to work remotely for the first time and don't know how to setup their connection properly.
While some companies may have the extra capacity to handle one or two sites being shut down here or there, do they have the capacity to handle large numbers of sites, possibly all sites, being shut down? If the swine flu truly turns into a major pandemic, will the IT infrastructure be able to support this new way of doing business?
Companies are willing to pay for an extra server or two for Disaster Recovery, in case the main servers running their VPNs break or the data center they're located in go down. But in general they tend to size their solution assuming a certain % (say, for example 5%) of the company is working at home at any given time. Most companies will not pay to have numerous spare servers, licenses, and bandwidth available for the unlikely event of a world-wide pandemic of epic proportion that requires 20%, 50% or more of their employees to work at home concurrently. The cost vs risk analysis simply doesn't add up.
It looks like Swine Flu is not shaping up to be the massive pandemic that the media was originally painting it as. But it certainly could have been. Every CIO/CTO of every large company has probably been sweating about this one and whether the infrastructure is going to fail under their "reign". They can't justify shelling out the big bucks to beef it up, so they're crossing their fingers and hoping the "big one" will happen after they've retired and some other poor shmuck has taken over.
What can you do? Well for one, make sure you're set up now to telecommute - that you have the equipment you need and know how to setup your VPN. And start using it, even a day or so per week. The more people who start telecommuting on a regular basis, the more resources IT can justify now, and the less impact there is if a major pandemic really does send the whole company to work from home! Depending on your position in the company (especially if you work in IT), if you can start asking probing questions to management about telecommute capacity, it might just get them to try to prepare a little better for the worst case scenario.
One more thing - if there is a major rush on telecommuting, when you have your VPN going, don't disconnect. The licensing limitations (among other things) may be set on a first-come, first-served basis.
Bottom Line? Experience huge gains in time, money, and stress reduction by telecommuting. You deserve it! But don't dive in unprepared. Make sure you know how working from home differs from going into the office. I invite you to get your free copy of my "Top 10 Telecommuter Mistakes list" - to learn the wrong ways... and right ways... to get your telecommute career on track: http://avoidgoingtowork.com/free
Nicole Bachelor, the "Master of Telecommuting Success" is the author of "How to Avoid Going to Work Without Quitting your Job". She specializes in teaching people how to effectively work from home. Nicole has been telecommuting exclusively for over 4 years, and has vast experience working with teams that are spread across the world.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nicole_Bachelor http://EzineArticles.com/?Swine-Flu---What-Happens-When-Everyone-Wants-to-Telecommute?&id=2383951
That's right - telecommuting is a popular option these days to avoid the germ-ridden corporate cafeterias, restrooms, and cubicle mazes. And in some cases, it's not just an option, but a requirement. Some large companies have temporarily shut down facilities in areas that are most heavily impacted by the swine flu. They're telling their employees to work from home.
But what is the impact to this innocuous-seeming solution?
The answer: a mad scramble for IT workers to make sure the infrastructure can handle the sudden dramatic spike in telecommuting. That precious Virtual Private Network or VPN that allows employees to "tunnel" into the corporate intranet from home needs servers running to support it, licenses for concurrent connections, and internet bandwidth. And as volume grows, these resources become overloaded. If there aren't sufficient servers, etc, then everyone (not just the people in the location that was shut down) will suddenly see drastic reductions in quality and speed to their remote connection. They may even start losing their connection intermittently and have to keep reconnecting.
While those who usually work in the office and are just working from home temporarily may tolerate this inconvenience, the die hard career telecommuters who work from home every day will certainly notice the difference. And chances are they'll be calling the help desk and yelling at whoever will listen. That adds up to increased support calls which means even more IT costs. And don't forget the increased support costs from the large number of people who find themselves trying to work remotely for the first time and don't know how to setup their connection properly.
While some companies may have the extra capacity to handle one or two sites being shut down here or there, do they have the capacity to handle large numbers of sites, possibly all sites, being shut down? If the swine flu truly turns into a major pandemic, will the IT infrastructure be able to support this new way of doing business?
Companies are willing to pay for an extra server or two for Disaster Recovery, in case the main servers running their VPNs break or the data center they're located in go down. But in general they tend to size their solution assuming a certain % (say, for example 5%) of the company is working at home at any given time. Most companies will not pay to have numerous spare servers, licenses, and bandwidth available for the unlikely event of a world-wide pandemic of epic proportion that requires 20%, 50% or more of their employees to work at home concurrently. The cost vs risk analysis simply doesn't add up.
It looks like Swine Flu is not shaping up to be the massive pandemic that the media was originally painting it as. But it certainly could have been. Every CIO/CTO of every large company has probably been sweating about this one and whether the infrastructure is going to fail under their "reign". They can't justify shelling out the big bucks to beef it up, so they're crossing their fingers and hoping the "big one" will happen after they've retired and some other poor shmuck has taken over.
What can you do? Well for one, make sure you're set up now to telecommute - that you have the equipment you need and know how to setup your VPN. And start using it, even a day or so per week. The more people who start telecommuting on a regular basis, the more resources IT can justify now, and the less impact there is if a major pandemic really does send the whole company to work from home! Depending on your position in the company (especially if you work in IT), if you can start asking probing questions to management about telecommute capacity, it might just get them to try to prepare a little better for the worst case scenario.
One more thing - if there is a major rush on telecommuting, when you have your VPN going, don't disconnect. The licensing limitations (among other things) may be set on a first-come, first-served basis.
Bottom Line? Experience huge gains in time, money, and stress reduction by telecommuting. You deserve it! But don't dive in unprepared. Make sure you know how working from home differs from going into the office. I invite you to get your free copy of my "Top 10 Telecommuter Mistakes list" - to learn the wrong ways... and right ways... to get your telecommute career on track: http://avoidgoingtowork.com/free
Nicole Bachelor, the "Master of Telecommuting Success" is the author of "How to Avoid Going to Work Without Quitting your Job". She specializes in teaching people how to effectively work from home. Nicole has been telecommuting exclusively for over 4 years, and has vast experience working with teams that are spread across the world.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nicole_Bachelor http://EzineArticles.com/?Swine-Flu---What-Happens-When-Everyone-Wants-to-Telecommute?&id=2383951
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