Move beyond remote working

Seamless working environments in which all business processes will be released from the restraints of office networks will be commonplace within five years.

That was the message from Btexact when representatives from the telco's advanced communication business met with Computing to share their vision of the future.

While remote working is very much a buzzword at the moment, BTexact believes the concept will become redundant over the next few years, with the emphasis instead being placed on the establishment of a seamless working environment.

'Today we are talking about mobility and the way we work,' said John Regnault, head of security at BTexact. 'But all of that is predicated by the fact that we have some hunk of a network that is the office.

'In five years time we will see virtualisation of the intranet or the office, so actually when you're talking mobility, everything is mobility. The office is just another static version of mobility.'

Regnault and his colleaguesare advising organisations not to get bogged down in the detail of mobile and remote technologies, but instead to start thinking about the bigger picture and how to establish an environment that is seamless to outsiders.

However, before any ideas about enablement technologies can be thrashed out, the business must understand its aims and decide whether it wants to simply provide its staff with mobile access, or whether it wants to take the seamless route.

'I'd start right at the business level to see if you're going to have mobile or seamless working, and whether the view is to look at it as seamless working,' Regnault advised.

'You have to look at it from not only a security point of view, but also from the business management point of view. It has to be a management philosophy that we are going to indulge in seamless working and buy in the technology to make it work,' he said.

Technology will of course be critical to the success of seamless working. But companies do not have to jump on new technologies and implement them for the sake of it.

'Mobility is not just wireless,' said chief technology officer Phil Holmes. 'Fixed mobility makes an awful lot of sense.'

'There's a lot of access technologies and its difficult to get going.'

Mobile venture leader Pete Smyth advises organisations to ignore trends and fads and go with what makes sense to them. He believes that decisions about mobile technologies in particular will soon be based almost entirely on price because differentiation will be significantly reduced.

'The whole point is the whole network has to be understood at the corporate level,' Regnault said. 'The thing is not to get bemused by one particular slice.

'You've got to say we are going to address mobile working, but you might say 3G doesn't matter enough in its coverage. However, my lap top has GPRS and wireless Lan access and it is really good if I can go to an airport lounge and download attachments over the wireless Lan,' he said.

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