Big companies pushing distributed work realize that mobile employees need three places to work: a corporate office, a home office and some sort of third place, an alternate office.

There are two visions about how best to meet the needs of the alternative office. One focuses on relieving congestion in big cities such as Toronto by putting office centers in suburbs near peoples' homes, a nascent model spearheaded by start-up Suiteworks. The other is the traditional professional suites model,catering to travelers wherever they happen to touch down. UK-based Regus already owns the latter and can expand and grab some of the former.

Regus started out 15 years ago renting meeting rooms and long-term office space to companies that had outgrown their space and needed to set up a temporary branch office or quickly establish a presence in a new location. Regus came through bankruptcy in 2002 to acquire its rival, U.S. company HQ, and now is positioning itself to ride the distributed work wave, offering new services suited to distributed workers and independent contractors.

For the past two years Regus has seen a 40% increase in business directly related to distributed work, and expects to see another 40% increase this year. The company has scrapped its long-lease requirements and began offering in February a $25-per-month "network access card" that gives workers access to all of Regus' 750 locations worldwide (350 in the U.S.). The card gets you IT and telecom support, and business services such as copying. Dedicated office space starts at $10 per hour.

"Large companies are saying they want to emulate small, nimble companies," says Regus CEO Mark Dixon. "They don't want their salesforces and consultants sitting in offices, but they want them to have an office or a meeting room when they need it. We've seen a sea change in the past six to 12 months. Companies are under tremendous cost pressure, and technology has made them less bothered by people working at home."

Last year Regus' virtual services business (no physical office space) accounted for 4% of the company's revenue. Dixon expects that to grow to as much as 20% in the next three to five years.

He also sees the U.S. "leapfrogging Europe" in its adoption of distributed work. As a result, Regus - which had $1.1 billion in revenue in 2004 - plans to expand 15% in the U.S. this year, opening facilities in big cities, small cities and suburbs (off highway exits). Next year it plans to grow 20%.