According to a new global survey of 237 senior executives, a significant upsurge in remote working is taking place. The business drivers behind this trend include better technology, globalisation and cost pressures. The SARS outbreak in Asia is the latest disruption to reinforce interest in business continuity planning, another driver of remote working.

Some executives still see significant barriers to remote working. But increasingly, these obstacles are not technological in nature - the tools that enable successful remote working are available now. Indeed, companies that cannot meet the supervisory and security challenges posed by remote working ought to be worried remote working is just one facet of a larger strategic trend towards ubiquitous network access.

In Remote working in the net-centric organisation, the second in a series of thought-leadership articles written by AT&T in co-operation with the Economist Intelligence Unit on the future of networking, we examine the growth of telework, the technologies and business drivers that make it possible and some of its challenges.

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