Consider the vast array of information products available to disseminate information, from cellular phones, to call forwarding, to pagers, to PDA's and on and on. The flexible telecommuting solution takes all of these into account by, essentially, making it irrelevant where the individual is -- for he or she will be able to access the information anywhere! Such a solution demands designing information flows so that they can be routed or re-routed to all types of devices from faxes to mail clients to pagers -- making the tool transparent.

Managers, corporate cultures, and office-based communities, understandably have a great deal of trouble adjusting to telecommuting. It's critical that a telecommuting implementation not just be technical, but that a great deal of care and effort is put into the transition, while realizing that the culture itself will have to endure a great deal of change. This is an area that is often overlooked with all types of technical implementations and one of the major reasons for their failure.

The Notes/Domino telecommuting connection
I believe that Notes and Domino, more than other individual products or suites of products, are best positioned to make telecommuting a reality. Notes provides the many linkages and interconnections necessary to bring together the various and complex systems that any major company would need to integrate. It has cross-platform functionality, it has the messaging, the calendar and scheduling foundation in place, phenomenal replication capabilities, workflow and collaborative capabilities, and, of course, integration with the Web.

Notes as the paperless office
Allow me a moment on my soapbox -- in my humble opinion, there is no longer any excuse to use paper. Telecommuting aside, Notes can take virtually any paper-based process and automate it. I know paper provides some kind of security and few people want to look at computer screens, particularly if they could look at paper. But, think of the trees, or the incredibly toxic bleach used to make our paper so blissfully white and then released into our streams to choke our happy frolicking salmon. And, a paperless office is a wonderful foundation for a telecommuting strategy. So, get rid of that paper.

Notes as mobility
We are all familiar with the wonders of replication, and whether intentional or not, replication is the Trojan horse of Notes and telecommuting. Those of us who are mobile (and I am) are very familiar with the horrendous amount of time it takes to load a Notes Database over a 28.8K connection. The happy telecommuter demands fast access to his critical information from email to electronic forms to hard data. As we all know, Notes can provide this when replication is intelligently utilized. At the moment a Web browser simply can't compete with a Notes client in this arena. But a Web browser plays a critical role in a telecommuting strategy, by providing the connected user access to a great deal of data much more rapidly than a Notes client could, without the overhead of the application itself. The ideal telecommuting solution would leverage both Notes and the Web, based on the need.