Behold the Virtual Company by Sam Varghese (Syndey Morning Herald, December 9, 2005) provides a peek at what the future of work may hold for more and more of us in the IT industry.

The Austrailian IT Register was founded in 2005 by Owen Baker, who sees a real advantages in the distributed development business model. 

The virtual team approach relies on independent subcontractors who for the most part work from home. The company provides a web-based extranet for its staff and clients.

Overhead is low with no corporate office space, and also because there's no cost when staff members are "on the bench" between gigs. They tend to work for smaller clients and see profit margins of around 20 - 30 percent - too small to attract much attention from traditional IT vendors. Despite unpaid bench time, consultants typically make 20 to 50% more than they would as salaried employees.

Baker says "...a virtual company such as ours is seen by many as the way of the future for many organisations - a mobile flexible workforce that can change and adapt as needs come and go. I personally think this is the kind of model that will shape the future of 'work and career' as we know it over the next 20 to 30 years..."

What about the difficulty managing from a distance? Baker's approach, simply put, treats people like grownups: ask for reasonable estimates on each job, and expect people to live up to them. There is a potential advantage in that most independent consultants are self-starters to begin with.

4:22:54 PM    
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The latest vendor assessment from Forrester Research evaluates "process-centric SCM solutions," which automate software development management processes, enabling development teams to store, track, and manage project assets across the application development lifecycle. Process-centric tools can assist organizations in driving quality improvements through their organizations, an especially important factor in the success in geographically distributed workforces.

Borland Software StarTeam Enterprise Advantage is the market leader for geographically distributed development. Advantages for large, dispersed teams include advanced cross-project search capabilities, file caching to solve the problem of responsiveness when using a centralized data repository, XML-based workflow customization and publish/subscribe functionality to help streamline communications, and secure web-based access to enable working from any Internet-connected computer - especially useful for mobile team members. Borland's press release quotes Marc Brown, senior director of product marketing at Borland: "We believe that distributed development is the single biggest challenge and opportunity software organizations will face over the next two years," - indicating a high-level commitment to serving the distributed workforce market.

Among its competitors, IBM's Rational ClearCase Change Management Solution ranks as the most popular and the strongest offering available today, but gets a thumbs down on customization. Microsoft's brand new offering, Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server, fares well for smaller .NET shops. MKS Integrity Suite, Serena Software ChangeMan Directions,  and SYNERGY/CM and SYNERGY/Change - paired applications from Telelogic - are also included in Forrester's evaluation.

2:02:32 PM    
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