According to a post by Ann Bednarz’ on Network World, employers are beginning to understand that poor application performance can have an interesting impact on the bottom line. As more employees are working outside a central office, poor application performance impacts the productivity of branch offices and telecommuters.
A study by Harris Interactive (commissioned by WAN Optimization vendor Riverbed) suggested that employees that can’t be guaranteed application performance on the road are less likely to work offsite. As each employee who stays in the office costs money (water, electricity, office/cube space, and a parking space), telecommuting can be a powerful cost savings… if productivity can be kept the same.
But people who are frustrated by poor application performance are likely to stay in the office instead of working remotely. This might include those who probably should stay home and work, like, say, sufferers of H1N1. And for those who have no choice but to telecommute, they’re not nearly as productive as they could be.
Among employees surveyed, 40% say they would work offsite more often if their business files or software would load more quickly, and 33% report that accessing business files or software remotely negatively affects their productivity.
Now, there are some things out of company’s control – a bad public Internet connection on the employee’s end can’t be helped. But even so, applications can be optimized not just for in-house use but for WAN use as well, by lowering the amount of round trips the application requires, and by lowering the latency of the Internet connection. The latter is probably more difficult, the former requires recoding the app.
The only problem I have with the article is the title: “Mobile employees want speedy apps.” I thought everyone wanted speedy apps. I know I do.
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