When I was in college, Sun Microsystems was the company to work for. Microsoft wasn't a force, IBM was fading, and Sun seemed to have the very cool technology, along with Silicon Graphics. I always wanted a Sun "pizza box," but never ended up getting one, moving into the PC world before I could afford one.
Over the last few years, after Scott McNealy stepped down and Jonathan Schwartz became CEO, I've watched the company make a comeback, fighting for market share and actually succeeding in becoming a company that's worth admiring. I only follow a few blogs that I find interesting and Jonathan Schwartz's is one of them. He doesn't write a lot, but he is very interesting.
I saw this article about Sun's success with telecommuting and it shows just how different Sun looks at the world. The company has 56% of its workforce, which is over 19,000 people working from home or in a flexible office, and they've never questioned the efficiency or effectiveness of having people work at home. What is interesting in this article is that they are concerned about the energy consumption of people working from home, and they examined whether or not the company's "carbon footprint" is larger or smaller because of their efforts.
They found that working in their offices consumed twice as much energy per employee, outside of fuel! That's leaving out the additional US$1,700 per year they calculated the average employee spends on gas. They samples their users and gave them energy measurement appliances to come up with the numbers.
To me this is a great article that you should save and send to your managers. The potential savings are significant enough that any company should be considering implementing a program, and especially if there is a shortage of office space. Delaying an expansion by implementing a strong telecommuting/flexible schedule work program could add up to significant financial savings.
And it's just a smart thing to do as energy consumption becomes a bigger and bigger line item in everyone's budget.
Steve Jones
The Voice of the DBA Podcasts
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