5 million new home-based offices by 2015

Thanks to innovation, a resurgent economy, energy concerns, and entrepreneurial yearnings, home-based businesses and corporate telecommuting have become the new way of life.  But, International Data Corporation predicts that within the at once four years, the home office market will add near two million home-based businesses and more than three million corporate home office households.

Improving economic conditions will lead to a net annual increase of in broad outline 180,000 telecommuters each year through 2015, IDC says. These will be employees working from home while normal business hours, versus employees who take work home from traditional jobs afterwards normal business hours. Thus, IDC says the need to be more productive is translating into extended workdays for professionals, and the number of home office households used by corporate employees to work outside of normal business hours will surpass 27 million at the end of 2015.

In terms of innovation tools, IDC says PCs will remain central to home worker productivity, and that smartphones are on the rise as then.

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist with a passion for green innovation and corporate sustainability issues. Her articles have appeared in Entrepreneur, Fortune Small Business, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. In a past corporate life, Heather was editor of Computer Reseller News, where she was a featured speaker about everything from software as a service to IT security to mobile computing.

Heather started her journalism life as a business writer with United Press International in New York. She holds a B.A. in English literature from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and has a thing for Lewis Carroll. When she's not hunting for a great green story, she's singing a cappella or scuba-diving with her husband, Joe.

My daily writing is focused on looking for topics for my blogs, GreenTech Pastures and Business Brains. I as well write often about emerging innovation trends just as mobile computing, unified communications and cloud computing. Occasionally, I will pop up at an industry conference in some sort of speaking capacity. In cases where a speaking engagement involves a sponsor that may be covered in this blog, that fact will be disclosed in coverage as the case may be.

My corporate writing work in the main consists of crafting innovation white papers about some aspect of innovation. When all is said and done that my commentary mentions a company for which I have provided consulting advice, I will disclose that fact. Nevertheless, there is no connection between these projects and the topics that I'm covering in my blog.

Joe McKendrick is an author and independent analyst who tracks the impact of information innovation on management and markets. Joe is as well SOA community manager for ebizQ, and speaks frequently on Enterprise 2.0 and SOA topics at industry events and Webcasts. He as well serves as lead analyst and author of Evans Data Corp.'s highly regarded bi-annual SOA/Web Services and Web 2.0 surveys.

Previous life

In a previous life, Joe served as director of the Administrative Management Society, an international professional association dedicated to advancing knowledge within the IT and business management fields.

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