Stop the Presses! Survey shows that accessing files slows off-site workers

Surveys can be useful, a complete waste of time, or anything in between.  Many surveys are conducted to simply validate an answer to a question that is already known.  Whether the survey is from the Hawaiian visitor's bureau asking visitors if they enjoy the tropical climate to the Jonas Brothers asking if pre-teen girls have a crush on them, surveys that aim to validate an expected and commonly known answer can indeed be a waste of time.

That being said, a recent survey conducted for Riverbed aimed to validate the well known poor experience of off-site workers that access their corporate files and applications while off-site.  While the over-arching answer was as predicted, there were some interesting findings as well.

The survey asked a series of questions of more than 900 U.S. adults aged 18 and up who are employed full time, normally work on-site and have ever accessed business files or software stored on their employer’s server/network/drives from off-site.

The survey found that:

   - 47 percent are working off-site more often now than they were 2 years ago
   - More than half (54%) concentrate better when working off-site compared to being in the office
   - Two-thirds (67%) would like to be able to work off-site more frequently than they currently do

Working “off-site” today means that employees are working remotely from myriad locations, according to the survey:

   - 80 percent have accessed business files or software from home
   - 37 percent have accessed business files or software from a hotel room
   - 27 percent have accessed business files or software from another company office location
   - 20 percent have accessed business files or software from a vacation destination
   - 19 percent have accessed business files or software from an airport
   - 17 percent have accessed business files or software from a business conference
   - 13 percent have accessed business files or software from a Wi-Fi enabled public space such as a park
   - 11 percent have accessed business files or software from a coffee shop.

The survey also found that, among employees who have ever accessed business files or software from a remote location:

   - 29 percent do so at least 5 times per week
   - 33 percent say accessing business files or software remotely negatively affects their productivity
   - 40 percent say they would work off-site more often if their business files or software would load more quickly
   - While waiting for business files or software to load, employees have:
   - checked their personal email (44 percent)
   - gone to the restroom (43 percent)
   - watched TV (41 percent)
   - made a phone call (38 percent)
   - gotten or made themselves a snack (34 percent)
   - day dreamed (26 percent)
   - done household chores (19 percent)
   - paid bills online (15 percent)

I know what you are thinking.  40% of workers would work off-site more often if they didn't have the performance issues definitely validates the application performance problem that off-site employees face, but the results surely are not nearly as high as the 92% of pre-teen girls that have a crush on the Jonas Brothers.

Luckily for the off-site workers, Riverbed's WAN optimization solutions increase performance close to the level as if they were back on-site.  Unfortunately, there is no current solution for the pre-teen crush on the Jonas Brothers.