It's ironic; everyone's teleworking - or, rather, they're just working, albeit at home - but the corporate telework industry is in the dumps. Equally ironic: Most big companies aren't spending on launching or expanding telework or hoteling programs because they're spending on security technology so employees (who are not teleworkers, mind you) can remotely access the network safely. In-Stat/MDR's latest report predicts the network security market will grow from $2.1 billion in 2001 to $5.8 billion by 2006, with the firewall/VPN segment representing the biggest chunk.

Know what this means? Companies are being forced to support the bottom-up, grassroots, work-from-anywhere way of life without benefiting from any top-down cost savings from shedding office space. Sun CEO Scott McNealy says Sun saves $150,000,000 per year ($10,000 per employee annually) by eliminating about half its office space. You'd think with all the evangelizing Sun and IBM do about the cost savings of hoteling, office parks would fall like dominoes. Yet most continue to sit half empty.

The call center industry, however, is beginning to get it. Call centers have always lost lots of money due to costly staff training and high turnover, which in turn has kept hourly wages low, which in turn attracts the least experienced and committed staffers, and around we go. But now call center managers are dealing with a new problem: overseas competition. According to DataMonitor, 200,000 call center jobs have been lost to India alone in past years. Hundreds of others are going to the Philippines (Linksys just built a call center there) and Canada. In Asia in particular, applicants are plentiful, college educated (commonly with computer science degrees) and will work for $5 per hour, even less.

I just got back from the Call Center Demo Show/Southwest Telework Conference in Dallas, and boy, are the call center people excited about telework. A full day of sessions devoted to virtual call centers was packed, and show sponsors say it was the best-attended track of the four offered. I met several companies that offer virtual call center outsourcing services (ARO, Working Solutions, Alpine Access and Willow CSN), meaning a client uses the company's call center agents to support its business or to augment an existing call center. This market is growing about 30% per year.