I had the opportunity today (while attending a small workshop on Working Communities in the SF area) to get an introduction and tour of Sun's program for flexible and mobile workers, called iWork@Sun.

It's no surprise that during the dark days of the last few years, employees like Sun found themselves saddled with far more office space than needed, and increasingly managing a global, mobile, and commute-averse workforce. The result? The iWork@Sun initiative, which has moved nearly holf of Sun's 35,000 staff into a flexible worksplace program, that relies on a "hoteling" style reservations of availble flex space in various Sun facilities.

I gleaned some of the facts that motivated iWork@Sun:

• 30-35% of staff were not "badging" into assigned locations
  
• Analysis of office-use data showed that providing far less seats would meet actual demand. Seat supply of 1 seat:1.2 staff (in engineering) - 2.5 staff (in field sales) people would meet actual demand for workspace (typically would be 0.85:1 ratio)
  
• 75% of staff desired to work from home, at least some of the time
  
• Sun's drop-in centers had already reached higher demand than supply

Since implementation, Sun has acheived $71M annual cost savings, which they estimate will grow to $150M as they ocntinue to roll out the program and as the company grows. This is based on 35K employees overall, with 17K in the iWork@Sun program.

Staff are willing participants, with those involved surveyed at 77% satisfaction levels, and average 3.1 commute hours saved per week. Employees estimate a 54% productivity gain, which Sun representatives agree is a highly subjective figure but again indiciative of satisfaction levels. Note that employees give back 60% of saved time -- reduced commutes, etc. -- to Sun.

Note: only a tiny 1% have opted to work completely at home. This apparently requires a very unusual personality to make it work. 59% remain in traditional dediicated office settings, but 49% of the population now flex their situation.

The technology that underlies the program is what Sun refers to as "Wired Mobility" -- thin client, diskless Java 'terminals' called SunRays, as well as a variety of sophisticated infrastructure to support flex working, such as Java cards that support login on any SunRay.

iWork@Sun has necessitated a shift in organizational theory and an emphasis on remote management skills, including self-management, that Sun has worked hard to inculcate throughout the company. Basics include moving to paperless information management, and a strong reliance on online collaboration.

We had a demo of the Sun Meeting Central tool [presented by Patricia Roberts, Product Manager iWork, and Nicole Yankelovich, principal investigator Sun Labs], which in some ways is quite conventional (i.e., presentation sharing), but which also supports some sophisticated moderation through the Facilitator tool. In particular, the integration of voice conferencing features is very rich -- automatically denoting which participant is speaking with a 'presence'-like icon in the Facilitator window.

In the small, I don't see the Meeting Central tool as really competitive with other web conferencing solutions -- at least not in the current incarnation. For example, the tool lacks integration with instant messaging, and no support for video conferencing.

However, I left extremely impressed with the iWork@Sun initiative as a whole -- the management approach and execution, the serious savings, the acceptance of the new model of organization by the staff, and the ability of Sun to develop a strong hardware and software infrastructure to support the new way of doing business. Definitely an indicator of things to come. Sun is planning to make iWork@Sun a product in the not-to-distant future. For more information, contact Glenn Dirks (glenn.dirks@sun.com) at Sun.