As the information revolution gathers pace, the 'virtual office' will become the norm in many industries, reports Paul Taylor .
As the 20th century draws to a close, the office workplace is undergoing perhaps its most dramatic transformation as digital technologies sweep aside their analogue predecessors and electronic commerce reshapes the way business is conducted.
Some have likened these changes to those that were ushered in 150 years ago by the industrial revolution. The impact may be just as dramatic, but the information revolution is happening at a much faster pace.
Even compared with 25 years ago, the offices in which most people now work are unrecognisable. A wide range of digital electronic equipment, including printers, fax machines, digital copiers and scanners can now be found in most offices and are quickly replacing their analogue counterparts.
Digital wireless systems - both radio and infra-red - are beginning to replace fixed wire data and voice networks and the distinction between data and voice networks themselves is rapidly disappearing.
In future, the broadband communications 'pipe' entering the office will carry the full range of multimedia services. For example, John Chambers, Cisco's chief executive, envisages a future where his company's networking equipment will facilitate the transmission and distribution of any form of data stream.
Meanwhile, personal computers - including portable devices - have replaced electric/electronic typewriters on virtually every desk and knowledge management has become a key business skill.
Intranets (private networks) already enable employees to exchange data easily with each other and with partners and customers, and electronic mail has joined voice telephony as a mainstream business communications tool.
Looking ahead, desktop video conferencing, Internet Protocol (IP) telephony and the growth of multimedia networking will lead to further changes in the office environment, as will the development of new 'business intelligence' tools that will enable users to find information more easily and spot trends or anomalies in vast quantities of data gleaned from electronic transactions.
In this new environment, the chief information officer (a new role which has emerged in leading edge companies), will help to manage and exploit knowledge - that most valuable of corporate assets.
In the office, the proliferation of electronic devices has had both positive and negative effects. Noise levels have fallen, but cabling requirements have grown as has the heat output, increasing the need for airconditioning.
The gradual replacement of cathode-ray PC monitors with TFT liquid crystal displays will begin to reduce heat output in the next few years.
The shape of offices has changed, too. Corridors and individual offices have gone, to be replaced by open-plan environments. Private space has disappeared in other ways: maximum utilisation of space is achieved through hot-desking, the sharing of workspace with colleagues working at different times.
As a PA Consulting report entitled Offices for the New Millennium which looks ahead 10 years, notes: 'Rather than being a place to go to work, the office will become a place to visit to interact with colleagues and obtain support services.
'The proportion of space devoted to meeting, conference and training facilities will increase compared to that devoted to workstations.' The PA report, written by Peter Osborne and based on a user survey, suggests that organisations will occupy less office space, in more, smaller buildings.
Changes in the physical office environment are being driven by several key factors: these include improvements in communications technologies which will promote remote working as a real and viable alternative.
Yet, according to a recent independent study prepared for Symantec, the PC software group, three-quarters of UK organisations have no formal or informal teleworking policy, despite the fact that half the respondents claimed it was something they wanted to do.
Among the key concerns which have inhibited the adoption of teleworking, respondents cited the lack of suitable software and the need to access the office in an easy and secure manner.
Some of these concerns are being addressed by companies such as Symantec with software packages such as pcAnywhere. Other groups, including Dell Computer, BT and Nokia, have combined their resources to put together all-in-one 'mobile office' packages - in this case, combining Dell's high performance Latitude CP notebook PC, Nokia's PC card phone and the Cellnet service, for Pounds 1,649.
Meanwhile, for those based in remote offices or working from home, the lack of bandwidth remains an important constraint. Wideband networks should be commonplace in the UK (and elsewhere) in less than 10 years, notes the PA report. At present, remote working is limited by capacity constraints - restrictions which will be eased by the widespread deployment of broadband technologies such as cable modems, xDSL devices and satellite systems.
'Removal of this limitation will greatly increase the practicality of working remotely,' says the report. In addition, the introduction of number portability and telephone numbers that apply to people rather than a location will simplify communications with mobile and remote workers.
More people will work from home.
Already, some IT experts are talking about the provision of 'IP dialtone' - the ability to hook into Internet-based services using any device, via any network (wired or wireless) anywhere.
Certainly, it seems likely that a greater proportion of office workers will spend some of their time working from home. As one electronics industry respondent told the PA researchers: 'We worked out that every office worker cost the company Pounds 5,000 in rent, rates, heat, light and power. We want people working from home and we want to use our buildings better.'
Within the office, distinctions between types of electronic device are blurring as most electronic devices switch from analogue to digital and network computing becomes the norm.
For example, Chris Wills, marketing director of Ricoh in the UK, says the Japanese office equipment group has seen a surge in sales of its digital copiers over the past 18 months. 'The investment we made in digital technology 10 years ago is beginning to pay off,' he says.
Once office equipment has moved to a common digital platform, bound together by the ones and zeros of binary computer language, the next step towards integration seems increasingly inevitable.
Thus, while the computer and telephone are being welded together by the requirements of network computing and communications, so multifunction devices, combining the functions of printer, scanner, photocopier and fax, are beginning to appear. 'Integration of these functions into one or two physical items is inevitable,' says PA.
Similarly, although the dream of the paperless office seems as elusive as ever, the growth in the use of electronic storage, particularly optical storage, continues apace.
While PA Consulting estimated that electronic storage comprised about 10 per cent of the total in 1995, it predicted that this figure would rise to about 50 per cent by 2005.
Together with the trend towards companies employing fewer people, this could lead to a marked reduction in office space requirements, and a greater fragmentation of the market itself.
Companies are expected to employ fewer full-time staff - including administrators - in part, because of the growing use of outsourcing and a greater workforce flexibility.
Outsourcing itself implies that more of a company's business will be conducted by others away from the main place of business.
Analysts also suggest that as staff have become more PC-literate, the need for secretarial support has fallen with many organisations reducing these services by up to 30 per cent in the past 10 years. Direct dictation and 'voice' technologies will increase this trend.
Space requirements are also likely to be further reduced by the growing use of hot-desking or sharing office facilities as office workers become increasingly mobile.
Some companies, particularly those in the IT sector itself, have already embraced hot-desking, and some estimates suggest that, despite some opposition, up to half the office workforce will hot-desk in 10 years' time and spend about 50 per cent of their time outside the office.
Such a scenario suggests a 25 per cent reduction in office space. But while technology is making knowledge-based workers more location-independent, most studies suggest that face-to-face contact and human interaction are still seen as vital components for corporate success.
Therefore, some people suggest there will be a growing requirement for the provision of both meeting rooms and communal areas inside corporate buildings.
Looking even further ahead, a Henley Centre report for Barclays Life called 2020 Vision suggests that, by 2020, swathes of the workforce will have short-term or temporary contracts, 'with up to one month a year unemployed or under-utilised'.
Gazing into their crystal, ball the authors suggest: 'Work in 2020 will be different from now. We will be working shorter hours and many of us will be operating from home.
Commuting will change dramatically. There will be a rail renaissance with 350mph magnetic levitation trains zooming into the major cities.'
Most people will drive to work on private automated highways. Others will travel to work using mini-helicopters. The wealthiest may use the space shuttle to commute from the UK to Los Angeles or Sydney in less than two hours.
The Henley Centre report continues: 'The virtual office will become the norm in many industries, and 10 per cent of FTSE 100 companies will be virtual, without a centralised headquarters.'
The online world will also transform business, creating 'friction-free' capitalism. 'There will be an entrepreneurial boom as baby capitalists use the Web to identify sources of venture capital across the globe. Recruitment practices will be transformed as the labour market goes global, as people place their CVs on-line and wait for the response.'
As Henley itself notes, failures in previous forecasts are legion. Nevertheless, it seems a safe bet that the millennium office will hold plenty of surprises.
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