Cisco is out with a report today that makes what I consider to be a totally outrageous claim. According to the study of 502 U.S based IT decision makers, 53 percent reported that less half their employees were currently set up to work remotely.
At this point in 2009, that statistic is shocking to me. Now to be fair, I don’t have all the data (I contacted Cisco earlier today, but so far haven’t been able to get any answers), so there could be some underlying disclaimers or assumptions that I’m not aware off.
I’ve written about Cisco’s remote worker studies in the past (going back as far as 2006) as this is a common and frequent area for Cisco to investigate. Cisco does have a solid business selling remote access (VPN and other networking technologies) gear, so it makes sense for them to try and understand the market as fully as possible.
For the current study, in terms of why remote access technology wasn’t available to more of the respondent base, the answer is quite revealing.
“Asked why more employees did not have access to the technology that would enable them to work outside the office, 38 percent said that business requirements did not necessitate it,” Cisco stated in a press release.”
That’s interesting. Personally I see remote access as being critical, but I suppose if I worked in a career where being on-site was critical, then remote access might not seem as important.
